Line boards for grid-sized categories: denim, intimates and swim
In most categories a card on the board stands for a colourway with a straight size run behind it. In these three it stands for a two-axis grid, or a pair of garments sold separately — which means two boards showing the same number of cards can carry wildly different buys.
The board has to say so, and the review has to run in a different order.
One card, two size axes
A denim card covers waist by inseam. A bra card covers band by cup. Both are grids, not runs, and the SKU count behind a single approved colourway is the product of the two axes rather than the length of one.
The consequence for a board is direct: card count stops being a proxy for line size. A board of forty denim cards and a board of forty tee cards are not comparable, and the group looking at them has no visual signal telling them so — every card is the same rectangle.
The fix is to put the grid dimensions and the resulting SKU count on the card itself, and to let the board sort or shade by it. A card carrying a 6 × 4 grid should look different from one carrying 6 × 1. Where a card understates its own commitment more generally, the SKU entry in the glossary covers the underlying rule and when to state the size run.
Review fit before colour
A normal line review walks the board by delivery, then by category, then by colour story. In grid-sized categories that order wastes the room’s attention.
Killing a fit removes its entire grid across every wash, print and colourway sitting on top of it. That is the largest single lever anyone in the room has. Reviewing colour first means the group spends its energy on decisions worth a fraction of that one — and frequently approves a full palette across a fit that gets cut twenty minutes later.
One precision worth carrying: in denim the object under the colour layer is the fit block; in intimates it is the cup construction or mould, which supports a defined band and cup range and is a development event to change. The review-order rule holds for both, but naming the object per category keeps the conversation accurate — a mould and a fit block are not the same kind of thing, and the people who build them know it even if the board does not.
Put the piece mix on the card
Swim adds a different multiplier: tops and bottoms are designed as a set and bought as separable pieces, often in different sizes by the same customer.
Which is why season-end residual in swim is so rarely style failure and so often piece imbalance — the tops cleared and the bottoms sat, or one half ran out in the middle sizes while the other did not. Putting the intended top-to-bottom mix ratio on the card makes that a decision taken deliberately at review rather than a ratio inherited from whatever the sample set happened to contain. It is one number per card, and it is the number most likely to be wrong by default.
They look like colourways and cost more
On a board, a wash reads as a colourway — a different-looking version of the same body. Commercially it is not. Each wash carries its own development and laundry route; each print carries artwork and strike-offs. So a board crowded with near-identical washes is multiplying grids and development slots simultaneously, and the visual difference between two adjacent washes is frequently much smaller than the difference in what they cost to bring to market. Building the palette deliberately — the colour story method applies here — is worth more in these categories than in most.
Where to go next
- Line boards for footwear and accessories — the nearest neighbour, where the card carries a size run and a material story instead of a grid.
- How to run a line review — the standard walk order this guide reverses.
- How to build a line board — the base method underneath all of it.
- Option count — why the count on the board and the count in the buy diverge.
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.