What is brand presence (distribution breadth)?

Brand presence measures where a brand is sold online: the number of covered retailers listing at least one of its products in a period, and which kinds of retailer they are (the brand's own website, department stores, specialists, marketplaces, off-price).

It is the distribution side of assortment. Assortment count asks how many products a brand has live; brand presence asks at how many retailers.

Data Purl records every product it observes at each covered retailer weekly, with each product's brand resolved to its owner. A brand is present at a retailer in a period if at least one of its products is listed there. Presence can be counted by retailer, by retailer type or as a share of a brand's listings.

To separate a brand's own moves from changes in Data Purl's coverage, compare a constant panel: retailers covered, or carrying the brand, throughout the period.

A brand gaining retailers is widening distribution; one losing them may be tightening wholesale, being dropped, or deliberately moving up-market. A shift in retailer mix, for example from off-price to luxury retailers, shows repositioning that price data alone can miss.

• Raw retailer counts rise as coverage grows. Use a constant retailer panel for change over time.
• Marketplaces list products from many sellers, so their listing counts are not comparable with a single retailer's.