跟讀練習: Why Retailers Are Shrinking Their Assortments - 通過影片學習英語口語

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Retailers across the board are slashing assortments.

You may notice when a product is no longer carried at your favorite store or online.

And when companies start talking about it on their earnings calls, you know it's happening at a wider scale.

SKUs, or stock keeping units, are unique codes assigned to every product to keep track of inventory.

Let's say you want to buy this jacket.

Its SKU number might indicate the manufacturer, product type, color, and size, with a series of numbers and letters.

Companies like Dollar General, BJ's Wholesale Club, Lululemon, and Under Armour are either planning to cut

or have already cut skews at their stores in an effort to improve their financials.

But how can intentionally reducing the number of products, and in some cases even intentionally shrinking revenue, ultimately help a business turn things around?

amount.

Public companies typically want to show investors growth, quarter after quarter.

And one of the ways brands can grow sales is by adding more products.

But what happens when those products don't sell?

Well, it can lead to discounting, which in turn hurts profitability.

That product can also end up at off -price stores like TJ Maxx, which can hurt a brand's reputation.

If you have zero discounting, you're not taking enough fashion risk.

If you're not taking enough fashion risk, why do you exist?

And so you absolutely need to discount.

But discounting needs to be fixing mistakes.

It needs to be done quickly.

It needs to be done somewhat invisibly.

And then we need to move on.

There's a reason I believe the off -pricers are such compelling business models.

TJ, Ross Stores.

These businesses allow companies, allow big brands to sell product invisibly.

When a brand isn't selling its products at full price, that means less profit.

It's one of the reasons Lululemon has been struggling lately.

From 2024 to 2025, the company grew sales by about $500 million, yet its operating profit fell by about $300 million.

The company acknowledged the negative impact of markdowns in recent earnings calls.

It said it cut North American SKUs by 15%.

You can reduce assortments and then try to make up for that revenue by selling more of your signature items.

Or a brand can acknowledge that its revenues need to shrink too.

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.

Lulu has a long way to go.

And simply cutting skews, simply saying we need to have better product is not the answer if you're too large.

The absolute best product can still be dilutive if there's too much of it in the market.

And Lulu last year did $6 .5 billion of American sales.

3 to 4 billion dollars in revenue is where companies generally hit a healthy saturation level.

It's a level where they can be large and still cool.

Nike is an exception to this rule.

One of the reasons why is because of its ability to sell distinctively different brands, like Jordan.

While the company doesn't specifically break out its U .S sales, it did around 20 billion dollars in North America in 2025.

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,

it's actively working to clean up its product offerings.

We made meaningful progress across the business through rebalancing the product portfolio, driving momentum and growth in performance,

while reducing classic footwear franchises by more than $2 billion.

For big box stores like BJ's and small box stores like Dollar General, the goal of assortment reduction is different.

These retailers carry thousands of individual brands

so removing certain products is more of a defensive move it simplifies inventory management

and allows stores to refine what they're offering from a brand perspective

if you were of something the more expensive it can be

when you shrink a box when you take a retailer

and say i'm going to focus more on curation you're getting smaller

but you're trying to re -establish why someone's walking into your box in the first place

and so it does get better but it doesn't necessarily help your bottom line as much, it's more protecting.

In an earnings call from June 2025, Dollar General said the elimination of 1 ,000 SKUs from the

previous year opened up more shelf space for its best -selling products.

By March 2026, the SKU reductions reached over 1 ,500 products, which the company said provided benefits to the overall supply chain.

The team is looking at continued SKU rationalization, albeit probably more surgical in nature as we move forward

but it is still our ultimate goal to grow sales at or above the rate of inventory growth overall.

Reducing assortments is much easier said than done.

Box stores risk losing customers to competitors with more offerings.

BJ's actually acknowledged that a previous attempt to cut SKUs was unsuccessful.

We didn't prosecute that opportunity in the right way.

We just cut SKUs, which cut sales, and then we added some SKUs back and

so really what we're doing is removing unnecessary choice think about traditional soda we don't carry cans

and two liters of the same product anymore For individual brands, on the other hand, cutting revenue can be intentional.

Under Armour's stock is down significantly over the past five years.

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.

Under Armour shrunk their skews by 25 % over the past few years and plans to cut another 25%.

In an August 2026 earnings call, the company acknowledged that its problems would not be solved by chasing unhealthy sales volume

or short -term revenue today we're managing for quality fewer products with greater purpose tighter execution

and a clearer reason to buy this mandate to the organization is incredibly straightforward real will sell

so much more of so many less products at a much higher full retail price under armor feels like it has

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,

so far in the results, it seems very much a working process.

But it's hard.

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.

Cutting products can also make a brand less accessible.

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.

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.

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.

For brands, the more people you get, the less exciting the story becomes.

For more people you get, the less specialized the product becomes.

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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本課的詞彙與口語要點

這節口語課以影片“Why Retailers Are Shrinking Their Assortments”為素材。影片中反覆出現的詞有：product, brand, Sku, revenue, sale。這段影片共有 47 個句子、1233 個單詞可供跟讀。講話部分時長為 7:01。說話人語速自然，每分鐘約 176 個詞，接近日常對話。 84% 的單詞屬於英語最常用的 3,000 詞，其餘的詞建議在練習前先學一下。

影片中的重點詞彙

影片中 15 個值得學習的單詞，附發音和釋義：

單詞	發音	釋義
discount 名詞	/ˈdɪskaʊnt/	折扣
acknowledge 動詞	/əkˈnɑ.lɪd͡ʒ/	承認 /承認
earnings 名詞		收益, 收入
inventory 名詞	/ˈɪn.vən.tɹi/	庫存 /庫存, 儲存 /儲存
retailer 名詞	/ˈɹiteɪlɚ/	零售商
reduction 名詞	/ɹɪˈdʌk.ʃən/	還原 /還原, 還原作用 /還原作用
intentionally 副詞	/ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/	故意, 蓄意
necessarily 副詞	/ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/	必然地, 必定地
reputation 名詞	/ˌɹɛpjʊˈteɪʃən/	名譽 /名譽, 聲譽 /聲譽
chase 動詞	/t͡ʃeɪs/	追逐, 追
solve 動詞	/sɒlv/	解決 /解決
exception 名詞	/əkˈsɛpʃən/	排除
indicate 動詞	/ˈɪndɪˌkeɪt/	表明, 表示
jacket 名詞	/ˈd͡ʒæk.ɪt/	夾克 /夾克, 上衣
fewer	/ˈfjuː.ɚ/	較少 /較少, 更少

影片中出現的短語動詞

單詞	釋義
back down 動詞	做出讓步 /做出讓步
break out 動詞	逃出
give up 動詞	投案, 自首

影片中的語法

說話人最常用的結構，並附上影片中的原話：

結構	影片中的用法
被動語態 be + 過去分詞 — 強調發生了什麼，而不是誰做的	be done · would not be solved
現在完成時 have/has + 過去分詞 — 過去發生但與現在仍有關聯的事	have already cut · has also fallen

需要注意的發音

說話人用了 17 次縮略和弱讀形式，例如 you're, doesn't, don't。請按聽到的簡短形式來說。

“sh” 和 “zh” 音: reduction /ɹɪˈdʌk.ʃən/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/, reputation /ˌɹɛpjʊˈteɪʃən/, exception /əkˈsɛpʃən/, execution /ˌɛk.sɪˈkjuː.ʃən/
長單詞——注意重音位置: intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, reputation /ˌɹɛpjʊˈteɪʃən/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, execution /ˌɛk.sɪˈkjuː.ʃən/

中文母語者容易讀錯的音：

/v/ — 不要讀成 /w/，上齒輕觸下唇: inventory /ˈɪn.vən.tɹi/, solve /sɒlv/, defensive /dɪˈfɛn.sɪv/, actively /ˈæktɪvli/, investor /ɪnˈvɛs.tə(ɹ)/
詞尾子音 — 要讀清楚，後面不要加母音: discount /ˈdɪskaʊnt/, acknowledge /əkˈnɑ.lɪd͡ʒ/, chase /t͡ʃeɪs/, solve /sɒlv/, defensive /dɪˈfɛn.sɪv/
/r/ 和 /l/ 的區別: retailer /ˈɹiteɪlɚ/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, profitable /ˈpɹɑ.fɪ.tə.bl̩/, deliberate /dɪˈlɪb.(ə.)ɹət/

如何用這段影片練習

先完整聽一遍影片，不要開口，記下不認識的單詞。
先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟讀，熟練之後再回到正常速度。
錄下自己的聲音並與原聲對比，特別注意 discount, acknowledge, earnings 這類單詞。

什麼是跟讀法？

跟讀法 (Shadowing) 是一種有科學依據的語言學習技巧，最初開發用於專業口譯員的培訓，並由多語言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。這個方法簡單而強大：您在聽英語母語原聲的同時立即大聲重複——就像是一個延遲1-2秒緊跟說話者的影子。與被動聽力或語法練習不同，跟讀法強迫您的大腦和口腔肌肉同時處理並模模擬實的講話模式。研究表明它能顯著提高發音準確性，語調，節奏，連讀，聽力理解和口語流利度——使其成為雅思口語備考和真實英語交流最有效的方法之一。

影子跟讀法: 閱讀完整分步指南 →

跟讀練習: Why Retailers Are Shrinking Their Assortments - 通過影片學習英語口語

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