See the whole line before you commit the buy.
A line board is the visual workspace where an apparel team lays out a season’s range — styles, colorways, and price tiers — and shapes it by eye and by the numbers. This is a free resource on what a line board is, how to build one, and how the tools compare.
A line board is not a wholesale line sheet
Where design and merchandising build and pressure-test the range — add, cut, and rebalance styles before the buy. Its audience is your own team.
Where a finished range is presented to buyers to take orders (JOOR, Brandboom, NuORDER). A different job for a different audience — not what this resource is about.
What is a line board? →
The definition, what goes on a board, and how it differs from a wholesale line sheet.
How to build a line board →
A step-by-step from concept and colorways to a sign-off-ready range at a line review.
Line board vs spreadsheet, Miro & Airtable →
Why generic grids and whiteboards go stale, and what a board built for planning adds.
From mood board to assortment →
The design-to-merch handoff — turning a season’s direction into a concrete range.
Visual line planning tools compared →
Line sheet tools, PLM boards, and whiteboard hacks vs a line board built for planning.
Glossary →
Line board, visual line plan, line review, colorway board, storyboard, assortment board.
A board is only as good as its connection to the plan
A static image grid looks great and drifts the moment option counts, costs, or the open-to-buy change. The value of a line board shows up when the picture and the plan stay in sync — when cutting a style at the line review updates the option count, the assortment, and the buy without re-keying.
That is what Canvas, the visual line board inside RetailNorthstar, is built to do — connect the board to open-to-buy, assortment, sizing, purchase orders, and production. For the numeric side of line planning (option counts, OTB, size curves), the free tools live on retail-plan.com.
See how a line board works when it is connected to the plan. Canvas — the visual line board inside RetailNorthstar — links the board to open-to-buy, the assortment, sizing, purchase orders, and production, so the board stays live instead of going stale.