Line board vs assortment board
Both are visual boards full of styles, and they are routinely confused. The difference is what each one decides: a line board decides what the range is, and an assortment board decides where it goes and how deep.
They are sequential, not alternative. The signed-off output of the first is the input to the second.
Eight ways they differ
| Line board | Assortment board | |
|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | What should the season’s range be? | Where does the range go, and how deep? |
| Decision made | Add, cut, rebalance styles | Allocate breadth and depth by channel, door, or cluster |
| Unit on the board | A style, with colorways and a price tier | A style–channel combination, with a depth |
| Owned by | Design and merchandising, with planning | Merchandise planning and allocation, with buying |
| Balanced against | Category mix, price architecture, option count | Channel capacity, door grade, open-to-buy |
| Timing | Range building through line review sign-off | After sign-off, before the buy is placed |
| Output | A locked range | A depth-by-channel plan that becomes the buy |
| Goes stale when | Option counts or costs change upstream | The range is re-cut after assorting has started |
- Line board
- What should the season’s range be?
- Assortment board
- Where does the range go, and how deep?
- Line board
- Add, cut, rebalance styles
- Assortment board
- Allocate breadth and depth by channel, door, or cluster
- Line board
- A style, with colorways and a price tier
- Assortment board
- A style–channel combination, with a depth
- Line board
- Design and merchandising, with planning
- Assortment board
- Merchandise planning and allocation, with buying
- Line board
- Category mix, price architecture, option count
- Assortment board
- Channel capacity, door grade, open-to-buy
- Line board
- Range building through line review sign-off
- Assortment board
- After sign-off, before the buy is placed
- Line board
- A locked range
- Assortment board
- A depth-by-channel plan that becomes the buy
- Line board
- Option counts or costs change upstream
- Assortment board
- The range is re-cut after assorting has started
Why the order is not negotiable
The most common and most expensive process error in this area is assorting a range that has not been properly cut. It happens for an understandable reason: channel teams want visibility early, and the calendar is tight, so distribution work starts while the line is still moving.
The cost is that depth gets committed to options that should not have survived the line review. Cutting a style after it has been assorted across four channels does not just remove it — it leaves holes in each channel’s breadth that someone has to backfill late, usually with whatever is available rather than what the channel needed. The range ends up shaped by the order in which decisions happened rather than by judgement.
The discipline is simple to state and harder to hold: lock the range, then assort it. Where a channel genuinely needs early visibility, show them the line board and be explicit that it is not yet decided.
What has to survive the handoff
When the range moves from line board to assortment board, four things need to travel with it: the style list as signed off, the colorway decisions per style, the price tier each style sits in, and the reasoning behind the cuts. The last one is the one that is almost always lost.
Losing the cut rationale matters because assortment work regularly surfaces a gap — a channel with nothing at the opening price point, say — and the fastest fix is to reinstate something that was cut. Without the record, teams reinstate the style that was cut for a good reason, and the review’s work is quietly undone. This is why running the review properly includes recording what was cut and why.
Where the two boards are separate files, this handoff is a re-keying exercise and each re-key is a chance to introduce drift. Where they are views onto one data model, the handoff is a state change rather than a transfer — which is the practical argument for a connected board over two disconnected artifacts.
The assortment side is mostly numeric work
This site covers the visual half of line planning and deliberately stops at the board’s edge. Depth by channel, size curves, open-to-buy, and the buy plan itself are numeric problems with their own methods — those are covered on line plan vs assortment plan and in the assortment planning template on retail-plan.com.
- A line board decides what the range is; an assortment board decides where it goes and how deep.
- They are sequential — the line board’s signed-off range is the assortment board’s input, not a parallel activity.
- Assorting before the range is locked commits depth to styles that should have been cut, and backfilling the holes late degrades every channel.
- Four things must survive the handoff: the style list, colorway decisions, price tiers, and the reasoning behind each cut.
- The cut rationale is the one most often lost, and losing it is how a review’s decisions get quietly reversed during assortment.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between a line board and an assortment board?
- A line board decides what the range is — which styles, colorways, and price tiers make up the season. An assortment board decides where that range goes and how deep: which styles reach which channels, doors, or clusters, and at what depth. The line board comes first and its signed-off output is the assortment board’s input. One is a range-building tool, the other a distribution tool.
- Can the same board do both jobs?
- In a connected system the two are views of the same underlying data rather than separate artifacts, which is the ideal — cutting a style on the range view removes it everywhere downstream. But they remain two distinct decisions, made by different people at different points in the calendar, and collapsing them into one working session usually means the range gets decided by whoever has the strongest channel opinion rather than on the merits of the line.
- Which comes first, the line board or the assortment board?
- The line board. Assorting a range that has not been properly cut spreads depth across options that should not have survived the line review, and the resulting mistake is expensive because it is discovered after the buy. Decide the range, lock it, then assort it.
- Is an assortment board the same as an assortment plan?
- The board is the visual expression of the plan. The assortment plan is the numeric structure — styles by channel by depth against open-to-buy. The board makes it legible, so over- and under-assorting by channel is visible rather than buried in rows. They describe the same decision at different resolutions.
- What is a range board?
- “Range board” is generally used as a synonym for the line board, particularly in the UK and Europe, where “range” is the more common word for what North American teams call the line. It refers to building the season’s range, not to distributing it — so a range board is a line board, not an assortment board.
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.