Shelf form (warehouse vs showcase)
Shelf form is how GetProfit sorts stores into warehouses, where a small part of a wide catalogue sells, and showcases, where a narrow one sells more evenly.
How it works
We grouped 114 stores by ten traits of how their range behaves in ads and left store size out. The traits include the share of products that ever sold, the share of revenue from products with one or two orders a month and the share of ad spend on products with no sales. Two forms came out (GetProfit data, June 2025 – June 2026):
| Warehouse | Showcase | |
|---|---|---|
| Stores | 73 | 41 |
| Catalogue, median | 6,457 products | 1,187 products |
| Share of ad spend on products with no sales, median | 34% | 7% |
The simplest test uses that share of spend alone, measured in your ad account. At 15% or more, a store reads as a warehouse. This one rule agrees with the grouping in 91% of stores.
In the median warehouse, 34% of ad spend brings no sales. So the first questions for its ads are which products get budget at all and how much of the catalogue takes part in ads: its assortment coverage. The border is a gradient, not a sharp line: stores close to it fit both descriptions. What each form means for the range is covered in warehouse or showcase.
Example
Example store, not client data.
The tableware shop spends 40,000 a month on ads. Over a year, an average of 9,000 a month goes to products with no sales. That is 9,000 ÷ 40,000 = 22.5%, above the 15% line, so the shop reads as a warehouse, even though its 3,000 products are fewer than the median warehouse’s 6,457.
Not to be confused with
- Assortment breadth — the number of product categories a store sells. A warehouse can be narrow: the 13 warehouses at stage C have a median of about 28,700 products but only one top-level Google product category with 1% or more of their revenue.
- Growth stage — how much a store sells through ads. The two axes are related but far from the same: both forms occur at every stage, though at stage A, 20 of 22 stores are warehouses.
Right and wrong readings
- Wrong: “A warehouse is a badly run store.” Right: shelf form describes the range, not how well the ads are run. In the same 114 stores, the median warehouse had a ROAS of 501% and the median showcase 586%.
Sources
- GetProfit data: 114 online stores, June 2025 – June 2026 — clustering into two shelf forms, medians per form, the 15% spend rule and its agreement with the clusters, forms by stage.