How to Set Product Assortment Efficiency Benchmarks for Your Shopify Store (When Industry Data Doesn’t Exist)

Product assortment efficiency is becoming one of the most important metrics for Shopify store owners – but here’s the truth:

There are no official benchmarks. No universal standards. No clear answer to “What’s a good sales-to-product ratio?”
It’s a new, emerging metric – and that means if you want to track it properly, you need to create your own benchmarks.

Here’s how.

Industry Benchmarks for Product Assortment Efficiency

They don’t exist. Not really.

Unlike conversion rates or ROAS, there’s no reliable public dataset that says “the average fashion store has X sales per product” or “home goods collections should have fewer than 25 SKUs.”

Why?

• Shopify doesn’t provide this metric natively
• Most apps don’t track it
• Every store’s pricing and margins are too different for one-size-fits-all numbers

So if you’re here looking for official numbers – stop. Instead, let’s build your own.

What “Good” Efficiency Looks Like by Store Size

Here’s a simple idea:

• Large stores often need lower sales-to-product ratios — more long tail, more browsing
• Small stores should aim for higher ratios – tighter inventory, clearer merchandising

Hypothetical:

Store Type	Products	Monthly Sales	Sales-to-Product Ratio
Boutique fashion	50	€25,000	€500 per product
Mid-sized electronics	300	€60,000	€200 per product
General home decor	800	€40,000	€50 per product

These aren’t rules – just logic. More products doesn’t mean more efficiency. And if you’re selling 15€ candles, your “good” ratio won’t look like someone selling 900€ phones.

Fashion vs Electronics vs Home Goods: Benchmark Differences

Each vertical behaves differently:

• Fashion: high churn, trend-driven, returns-heavy – needs frequent pruning
• Electronics: low volume, high ticket – small collections can do big revenue
• Home goods: wide assortment, evergreen products – long tail matters

So don’t compare your store to another niche. Compare you to you.

The 80/20 Rule Applied to Product Assortment

Across many stores, we see this play out:

• 20% of products drive 80% of sales
• The rest? Often just sitting there.

Use the Sales-to-Product Ratio to prove that. It helps you spot:

• Collections where 5 products do the work of 50
• Categories where half your SKUs haven’t moved in months

Your first benchmark? Figure out how many products are actually pulling weight.

Red Flags: When Your Efficiency Score Needs Immediate Attention

Here’s what to watch out for — even without industry data:

• A collection with dozens of products and little to no revenue
• Subcategories where 80% of SKUs haven’t sold in 90 days
• Tags with more than 10 products but under €500 in sales last month
• Store-wide ratio is dropping month after month

If you’re seeing this, your assortment efficiency needs work.

Seasonal Variations in Assortment Efficiency

Don’t benchmark blindly. Efficiency changes with seasons.

• Some collections spike during holidays (e.g. gifts, partywear)
• Others slow down naturally in off-peak months
• Sales-to-product ratios often dip in high-product-launch periods

The fix? Compare each collection to its own past performance — not just a store average.

Setting Realistic Improvement Targets for Your Store

Here’s a simple process to build your own product efficiency metric:

1. Pick a baseline month (30 or 90 days)
2. Calculate sales-to-product ratio per collection
3. Calculate store-wide average
4. Sort your collections into 3 buckets:
   • Above average
   • Average
   • Below average
5. Set goals like:
   • “Raise all below-average collections by 20% over the next 2 months”
   • “Cut deadweight products from collections below €100 per product”

This approach fits every store — no need for outside benchmarks.

Case Study (Hypothetical): How One Store Improved Efficiency by 40%

Let’s say you run a Shopify store with 400 products and €40,000 in monthly sales. That’s €100 per product store-wide.

But when you break it down:

• 2 collections are doing €5,000 each with 20 products → €250/product
• 4 collections are doing €15,000 combined with 200 products → €75/product
• The rest? 180 products, only €5,000 in sales → €28/product

You trim the lowest-performing 80 SKUs, reorganize your best-sellers into focused collections, and push them harder.

One month later:

• Same product count (just different mix)
• Same total sales
• But now you’re getting €140 per product average — a 40% lift in efficiency

Final Thoughts

If you’ve been searching for product assortment efficiency benchmarks – don’t.

The smartest stores are setting their own benchmarks:

• Based on their data
• Tailored to their pricing
• Aligned with how their customers shop

Start there. Track it monthly. And let your efficiency tell the story.

With tools like Portfolytics, all of this is automatic. Sales-to-product ratios, collection-level analysis, trend tracking – no spreadsheets. Just clarity.