Two accounts can both carry your brand and still tell completely different stories. One store stocks four SKUs from your line and reorders every week. Another stocks a single SKU that hasn’t moved in a month. Both count as “distribution,” but they’re not the same win, and they don’t call for the same next move. That’s why Hoodie tracks distribution depth and breadth as two separate numbers as part of its cannabis sales enablement, instead of folding them into one.
Depth is how many SKUs from a brand’s line a single store carries. A dispensary that stocks eight of your ten SKUs has deep distribution with that account: your brand has real shelf presence, and the store’s staff and customers have more ways to find you.
Breadth is how many stores carry the brand at all, regardless of how many SKUs each one stocks. A brand in 200 dispensaries with one SKU each has wide distribution but almost no depth anywhere. A brand in 20 dispensaries with a full line has real depth but limited reach.
A single blended “distribution” metric hides which of these is true. That’s a problem for a rep, because the fix for shallow depth and the fix for narrow breadth are opposite moves. Hoodie reports the two separately, using its cannabis brand distribution software, so a rep can see, account by account and territory by territory, whether the opportunity is to go deeper where you already are or wider into stores you haven’t reached yet.
A rule of thumb for the field:
- Sell in (deepen), when an account already carries part of your line, has healthy sell-through on what’s there, and simply hasn’t been offered the rest of the assortment. This is usually the faster, lower-effort win: you’re expanding trust you’ve already earned, not building it from zero.
- Sell wide (open new accounts), when your depth in existing stores is already strong (little room left to add SKUs) or when your breadth lags competitors who are visible in dispensaries your brand hasn’t touched yet. This is the longer play (new relationships, new buyers, new shelf space), but it’s where growth has to come from once existing accounts are maxed out.
Most reps are running both plays at once across a territory, just with different accounts assigned to each. Hoodie’s Sales Enablement view keeps depth and breadth visible side by side so that call gets made deliberately, account by account, instead of by instinct.
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When you’re ready to see this in your own data, Sales Enablement is where to start.
