Glossary/Low-margin SKU
What is Low-margin SKU?
A low-margin SKU is a product whose contribution per unit — price minus COGS, fees, vouchers, fulfillment, and attributed advertising — is too small to justify the working capital, ad budget, and operational attention it consumes. It is a relative definition rather than an absolute threshold: what counts as low depends on the shop’s other options for the same shelf space and the same baht of ad spend. The defining property is not that the product loses money, but that it fails to earn its place, and because marketplaces report revenue rather than contribution, a low-margin SKU is often a shop’s top seller by units and its worst by profit.
01/Formula
Formula
Contribution per unit = price − COGS − fees − vouchers − fulfillment − ad cost
Contribution per unit of attention = contribution per unit × units sold
Flag when: contribution rate < shop weighted average
AND share of ad spend > share of contributionExample
Two SKUs in the same shop, same month. A: ฿199 phone case, 1,400 units, ฿22 contribution each = ฿30,800 B: ฿1,890 speaker, 180 units, ฿410 contribution each = ฿73,800 A is the bestseller by units and by order count, gets most of the ad budget and most of the packing time, and contributes 42% of what B does.
02/In detail
How do you find low-margin SKUs?
Rank the catalogue by contribution baht rather than revenue, then look at the products whose share of ad spend or inventory value is far larger than their share of contribution. That mismatch is the signal. Two refinements sharpen it. Compare contribution before and after attributed ad cost, because a product that is healthy before ads and thin after them has an ads problem, not a product problem. And check the trend: a SKU whose contribution rate has fallen five points over two quarters is usually reacting to a supplier price rise, a fee band change, or a promotional enrolment nobody revisited, and all three are more fixable than a structurally cheap product.
What are the fixes, in order of least disruption?
Stop advertising it first, since that is reversible within a day and often converts a negative-contribution SKU into a modestly positive organic one. Next, remove it from seller-funded promotions and check its fee category is correct — a miscategorised listing paying the wrong commission band is more common than sellers expect. Then look at price: a low-margin SKU is often under-priced relative to what its demand curve would bear, and a small increase on a product with thin elasticity can move contribution more than any cost work. Renegotiating COGS or changing the pack configuration comes next, and delisting last, because delisting also removes whatever traffic and basket-building the product was contributing.
When is a low-margin SKU worth keeping?
When it is doing a job that contribution per unit does not measure. Entry-price products that bring first-time buyers into the shop, consumables that generate repeat purchase, items that complete a bundle, and products that hold a category ranking all have value outside their own line. The honest way to keep them is to make the decision explicitly, with a number attached — what the shop is paying per month to hold the position, and what it believes it is buying — rather than keeping them by default because nobody looked. The dangerous case is the low-margin SKU that is also advertised, since it is then paying for its own unprofitable traffic.
03/Why it matters
The trap, in one paragraph.
Catalogue attention is finite and marketplace reporting is denominated in revenue, so shops drift toward promoting whatever sells most rather than whatever pays most. Left unchecked for a few quarters, this produces a shop that is busier, larger, and less profitable than it was, with the ad budget concentrated on exactly the products least able to fund it.
Common mistake
Deleting low-margin SKUs as a cleanup exercise. Most of them are fixable — the margin was lost to an ad campaign, a promotional enrolment, or a stale price rather than to the product itself. Diagnose the source of the erosion before removing a listing that may still be carrying traffic and ranking.
04/In DataGlass
How Low-margin SKU is used in DataGlass.
DataGlass ranks the catalogue by contribution baht and by contribution rate, computed per SKU and per variant from reconstructed order economics, and highlights products whose share of ad spend exceeds their share of contribution. The comparison of contribution before and after attributed ads is shown directly, so an ads problem is distinguishable from a product problem.
05/Sources
- [1] Shopee Thailand — seller commission and fee schedule
Category-dependent commission bands — one of the more common sources of unexplained margin erosion on a miscategorised listing.