CWA Blog Archive-Create A Retail 'Go' And 'No Go' List

Create A Retail 'Go' And 'No Go' List

Pdf Summary

Paul Terbrueggen shares a practical retail-planning tool he developed after leaving eight years at Amazon to become Retail Director for Summit Climbing Yoga and Fitness. He's candid about the gap in his expertise: expert at moving cardboard in warehouses, he found himself asking where one even begins to build a thriving retail program. Anyone starting or growing a retail program knows product selection is a critical series of decisions and a daunting task. But his Amazon experience taught him one transferable lesson, he needed a process. He set out to understand what retail sales in a multi-gym operation actually looked like, as well as a way to identify what they could look like, the current state versus the potential future state. The tool he created and iterated through generations, both at Summit and later in consulting, is what he calls the Go/No Go List. He's self-deprecating about the name, admitting it's not his best work, but the tool has proven a valuable jumping-off point for himself and for several other industry leaders trying to understand their current and future retail needs. A Go/No Go List is an orderly summary of current or past retail options, focused on the most critical products, that helps operators systematically decide what to carry and what to drop. The throughline is that effective retail management requires a deliberate, repeatable process rather than intuition or guesswork. Coming from a data-driven background, Terbrueggen recognized that product selection, one of retail's hardest and most consequential tasks, needs structure, and the Go/No Go List provides it by organizing retail options so operators can clearly evaluate what belongs in their shop and what doesn't. For gyms building or refining retail programs, the article offers both a mindset, treat product selection as a process, and a concrete, battle-tested tool for making those decisions systematically rather than by feel.

Asset Caption

Paul Terbrueggen shares the Go/No Go List, a retail-planning tool he built after moving from Amazon to gym retail management. It organizes current and potential retail options around the most critical products so operators can systematically decide what to carry and drop, treating product selection as a repeatable process rather than guesswork.