What a line review is
A line review is a retailer's scheduled, formal re-evaluation of every item in a category: the buyer pulls a year of performance data, hears pitches from current and prospective vendors, and decides which SKUs keep their shelf space, which get discontinued, and which new items come in at the next reset. For a salsa brand doing $18 per store per week across a 250-store conventional banner, one 45-minute meeting on the buyer's calendar decides whether that stays a $234,000-a-year line of business or goes to zero.
You will also hear it called a category line review, a category review, or just "the review." Whatever the name, the review is the decision. The planogram reset that follows a few weeks later is only the execution of what got decided in that room.
The line review calendar
Most retailers review each category once a year, on a published calendar that category managers guard closely. Miss the submission window and there is no appeal process; you wait a full cycle. A representative timeline for one category, working backward from the reset date:
| Weeks before reset | Milestone | What it means for a brand |
|---|---|---|
| 16 to 20 | Review opens, data pulled | Buyer requests new-item paperwork; the sales period you get scored on ends here |
| 12 | New-item submissions due | Forms, samples, and pricing in; late means next year |
| 8 to 10 | Vendor meetings | Your 30 to 60 minutes in front of the buyer |
| 4 to 6 | Decisions communicated | Accept and discontinue lists go out to vendors |
| 0 | Shelf reset | New planogram hits stores; cut SKUs sell down and disappear |
The data the buyer scores you on is already locked by the time you present, so the promotion you run the month before the meeting does nothing for this cycle. Prep also has to start about five months before the reset, which is why brands that treat the review as an annual fire drill keep losing items to brands that treat it as a year-round scoreboard.
What the buyer's spreadsheet says
Before the meeting, the buyer ranks every item in the set on velocity, usually dollars per store per week, from their own POS data plus syndicated data for the market view. Here is what that ranking looks like for a different brand, this one holding four slots in a shelf-stable salsa set where the category average is $15 per store per week:
| SKU | $ / store / week | vs. category avg | YoY | Likely outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Medium 16oz | $21 | +40% | +6% | Safe |
| Hot 16oz | $14 | -7% | +2% | Safe |
| Mild 16oz | $9 | -40% | -11% | On the block |
| Pineapple 16oz | $5 | -67% | -18% | Cut without a story |
The buyer draws a cut line near the bottom of the ranked list, and the freed slots go to the new-item stack. Pineapple 16oz at a third of category-average velocity and declining is getting cut unless someone argues otherwise, and "our customers love it" is not an argument the spreadsheet can hear. A real argument sounds like: it is the only pineapple salsa in the set, its buyers do not transfer to Mild, and it indexes 210 in the twelve stores near the coast, so cut it regionally, not chain-wide.
How to walk in as a brand
Walk in with the buyer's own banner data, not a national deck. A buyer at a 250-store chain does not care that you are growing 20% at other retailers while you sit flat in her stores. And the deck that survives review is about her set, not your brand: which segments are growing, where the shelf is under-spaced versus the market, what the aisle should look like next year. That is the posture category management rewards.
Then propose the swap yourself. If Mild 16oz is running 40% below category average, offer to trade it for your new item before the buyer puts it on the cut list. Running your own SKU rationalization ahead of the meeting turns a defensive review into a planning session, and it means you named your worst number before the buyer did.
Where Scout fits
Line review prep is mostly assembling the buyer's view before the buyer does: per-banner velocity ranks, YoY trend on every item, where each SKU sits against the category average, and which items fall below any plausible cut line. Built by hand, that is a week of spreadsheet work every review season, repeated for each retailer on the calendar. Scout reads your SPINS or retailer data and keeps that ranked view current, so prep starts from the same numbers the buyer will have. The story you tell about them, and the meeting itself, stay yours.
The short version
- A line review is the retailer's periodic re-evaluation of a category, where the buyer decides what stays, what gets cut, and what new items get shelf space at the next reset.
- It runs on an annual calendar per category. Submissions close around twelve weeks before the reset, and the data that scores you is locked before you present.
- The core instrument is a velocity ranking, dollars per store per week against the category average, with a cut line near the bottom.
- Survive it by bringing the buyer's own banner data, selling the category before the brand, and proposing your own swap before the buyer proposes it for you.