Pratique du Shadowing: Why Retailers Are Shrinking Their Assortments - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo
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Retailers across the board are slashing assortments.
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You may notice when a product is no longer carried at your favorite store or online.
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And when companies start talking about it on their earnings calls, you know it's happening at a wider scale.
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SKUs, or stock keeping units, are unique codes assigned to every product to keep track of inventory.
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Let's say you want to buy this jacket.
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Its SKU number might indicate the manufacturer, product type, color, and size, with a series of numbers and letters.
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Companies like Dollar General, BJ's Wholesale Club, Lululemon, and Under Armour are either planning to cut
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or have already cut skews at their stores in an effort to improve their financials.
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But how can intentionally reducing the number of products, and in some cases even intentionally shrinking revenue, ultimately help a business turn things around?
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amount.
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Public companies typically want to show investors growth, quarter after quarter.
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And one of the ways brands can grow sales is by adding more products.
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But what happens when those products don't sell?
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Well, it can lead to discounting, which in turn hurts profitability.
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That product can also end up at off -price stores like TJ Maxx, which can hurt a brand's reputation.
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If you have zero discounting, you're not taking enough fashion risk.
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If you're not taking enough fashion risk, why do you exist?
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And so you absolutely need to discount.
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But discounting needs to be fixing mistakes.
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It needs to be done quickly.
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It needs to be done somewhat invisibly.
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And then we need to move on.
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There's a reason I believe the off -pricers are such compelling business models.
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TJ, Ross Stores.
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These businesses allow companies, allow big brands to sell product invisibly.
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When a brand isn't selling its products at full price, that means less profit.
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It's one of the reasons Lululemon has been struggling lately.
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From 2024 to 2025, the company grew sales by about $500 million, yet its operating profit fell by about $300 million.
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The company acknowledged the negative impact of markdowns in recent earnings calls.
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It said it cut North American SKUs by 15%.
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You can reduce assortments and then try to make up for that revenue by selling more of your signature items.
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Or a brand can acknowledge that its revenues need to shrink too.
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The goal here is to increase the price of your remaining products, in turn selling less of them, but making more profit on each one.
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Lulu has a long way to go.
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And simply cutting skews, simply saying we need to have better product is not the answer if you're too large.
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The absolute best product can still be dilutive if there's too much of it in the market.
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And Lulu last year did $6 .5 billion of American sales.
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3 to 4 billion dollars in revenue is where companies generally hit a healthy saturation level.
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It's a level where they can be large and still cool.
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Nike is an exception to this rule.
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One of the reasons why is because of its ability to sell distinctively different brands, like Jordan.
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While the company doesn't specifically break out its U .S sales, it did around 20 billion dollars in North America in 2025.
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Nike is in the midst of a massive downturn, and while it's almost certainly not going to bring domestic sales down to that $3 -4 billion level,
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it's actively working to clean up its product offerings.
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We made meaningful progress across the business through rebalancing the product portfolio, driving momentum and growth in performance,
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while reducing classic footwear franchises by more than $2 billion.
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For big box stores like BJ's and small box stores like Dollar General, the goal of assortment reduction is different.
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These retailers carry thousands of individual brands
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so removing certain products is more of a defensive move it simplifies inventory management
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and allows stores to refine what they're offering from a brand perspective
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if you were of something the more expensive it can be
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when you shrink a box when you take a retailer
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and say i'm going to focus more on curation you're getting smaller
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but you're trying to re -establish why someone's walking into your box in the first place
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and so it does get better but it doesn't necessarily help your bottom line as much, it's more protecting.
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In an earnings call from June 2025, Dollar General said the elimination of 1 ,000 SKUs from the
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previous year opened up more shelf space for its best -selling products.
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By March 2026, the SKU reductions reached over 1 ,500 products, which the company said provided benefits to the overall supply chain.
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The team is looking at continued SKU rationalization, albeit probably more surgical in nature as we move forward
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but it is still our ultimate goal to grow sales at or above the rate of inventory growth overall.
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Reducing assortments is much easier said than done.
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Box stores risk losing customers to competitors with more offerings.
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BJ's actually acknowledged that a previous attempt to cut SKUs was unsuccessful.
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We didn't prosecute that opportunity in the right way.
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We just cut SKUs, which cut sales, and then we added some SKUs back and
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so really what we're doing is removing unnecessary choice think about traditional soda we don't carry cans
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and two liters of the same product anymore For individual brands, on the other hand, cutting revenue can be intentional.
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Under Armour's stock is down significantly over the past five years.
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Its revenue has also fallen by nearly a billion dollars, and its operating income, a key measure of profitability, has turned negative over the past couple of years.
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Under Armour shrunk their skews by 25 % over the past few years and plans to cut another 25%.
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In an August 2026 earnings call, the company acknowledged that its problems would not be solved by chasing unhealthy sales volume
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or short -term revenue today we're managing for quality fewer products with greater purpose tighter execution
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and a clearer reason to buy this mandate to the organization is incredibly straightforward real will sell
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so much more of so many less products at a much higher full retail price under armor feels like it has
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tried many times it's had multiple fits and starts of acknowledging that it may be a better business as a smaller business, and those are the words that management says,
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so far in the results, it seems very much a working process.
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But it's hard.
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You can't shrink in a half measure because it's very hard to do, and the worst thing you could do is try and give up.
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Cutting products can also make a brand less accessible.
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If, for example, you cannot afford to shop at a store paying full price but frequent their clearance section, the company may lose you as a customer as they work to reduce markdowns.
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And that may be deliberate, despite how difficult it may be to turn away that additional revenue, because your discounted purchase wasn't a very profitable sale for the company in the first place.
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It's hard for a company ever to say we need to shrink anything, but it's dramatically harder to say we need to shrink revenues.
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For brands, the more people you get, the less exciting the story becomes.
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For more people you get, the less specialized the product becomes.
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And so, so frequently we find that brands hit a peak, a healthy peak, extend past the peak by forcing it, and then find their way back down pretty harshly.
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Vocabulaire et conseils d’expression pour cette leçon
Cette leçon d’expression orale s’appuie sur la vidéo « Why Retailers Are Shrinking Their Assortments ». Les mots qui reviennent le plus souvent : product, brand, Sku, revenue, sale. Cette vidéo contient 47 phrases et 1233 mots à répéter en shadowing. La partie parlée dure 7:01. Le locuteur parle à un rythme naturel d’environ 176 mots par minute, proche d’une conversation courante. 84 % des mots font partie des 3 000 mots les plus courants en anglais ; le reste mérite d’être vu avant de commencer.
Vocabulaire clé de cette vidéo
15 mots de la vidéo à retenir, avec leur prononciation et leur sens :
| Mot | Prononciation | Sens |
|---|---|---|
| discount nom | /ˈdɪskaʊnt/ | rabais, discompte |
| acknowledge verbe | /əkˈnɑ.lɪd͡ʒ/ | reconnaître |
| earnings nom | revenus | |
| inventory nom | /ˈɪn.vən.tɹi/ | inventaire |
| retailer nom | /ˈɹiteɪlɚ/ | revendeur, distributeur |
| reduction nom | /ɹɪˈdʌk.ʃən/ | réduction |
| intentionally adverbe | /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/ | intentionnellement, à dessein |
| necessarily adverbe | /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ | absolument, nécessairement |
| reputation nom | /ˌɹɛpjʊˈteɪʃən/ | réputation, renommée |
| chase verbe | /t͡ʃeɪs/ | poursuivre, chasser |
| solve verbe | /sɒlv/ | résoudre, régler |
| defensive adjectif | /dɪˈfɛn.sɪv/ | défensif, defendant |
| incredibly adverbe | /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/ | incroyablement |
| exception nom | /əkˈsɛpʃən/ | exception |
| indicate verbe | /ˈɪndɪˌkeɪt/ | indiquer, signaler |
Les verbes à particule que vous entendrez
| Mot | Sens |
|---|---|
| back down verbe | baisser d'un ton |
| break out verbe | s'échapper, s’évader |
| clean up verbe | nettoyer |
| give up verbe | se rendre |
| open up verbe | ouvrir |
| turn away verbe | se détourner |
La grammaire de cette vidéo
Les structures que le locuteur utilise le plus, avec les mots exacts de la vidéo :
| Structure | Dans la vidéo |
|---|---|
| Voix passive be + participe passé — l’accent est mis sur ce qui arrive, pas sur qui le fait | be done · would not be solved |
| Present perfect have/has + participe passé — une action passée qui compte encore maintenant | have already cut · has also fallen |
Prononciation à surveiller
Le locuteur utilise 17 contractions et formes réduites, comme you're, doesn't, don't. Prononcez-les sous leur forme courte, telles que vous les entendez.
- Les sons « sh » et « zh »: reduction /ɹɪˈdʌk.ʃən/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/, reputation /ˌɹɛpjʊˈteɪʃən/, exception /əkˈsɛpʃən/, execution /ˌɛk.sɪˈkjuː.ʃən/
- Mots longs — placez bien l’accent: intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, reputation /ˌɹɛpjʊˈteɪʃən/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, execution /ˌɛk.sɪˈkjuː.ʃən/
Les sons difficiles pour les francophones :
- /h/ — il se souffle, il n’est pas muet: unhealthy /ʌnˈhɛl.θi/, harshly /ˈhɑːʃli/
- /tʃ/ et /dʒ/ — à ne pas adoucir en « ch » et « j »: acknowledge /əkˈnɑ.lɪd͡ʒ/, chase /t͡ʃeɪs/, jacket /ˈd͡ʒæk.ɪt/, franchise /ˈfɹænt͡ʃaɪ̯z/, signature /ˈsɪɡ.nə.t͡ʃə/
- /r/ anglais — langue recourbée, sans frotter la gorge: inventory /ˈɪn.vən.tɹi/, retailer /ˈɹiteɪlɚ/, reduction /ɹɪˈdʌk.ʃən/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, reputation /ˌɹɛpjʊˈteɪʃən/
Comment s’entraîner avec cette vidéo
- Écoutez la vidéo en entier une fois sans parler et notez les mots que vous ne connaissez pas.
- Commencez à la vitesse 0,75×, répétez phrase par phrase, puis revenez à la vitesse normale quand cela devient facile.
- Enregistrez-vous et comparez avec l’original, en faisant attention à des mots comme discount, acknowledge, earnings.
Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?
Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.