What is TDP (Total Distribution Points)?

TDP: Total Distribution Points

TDP is short for Total Distribution Points. It's a brand-level distribution metric, built by adding one number across every SKU the brand sells:

TDP = the sum of each SKU's %ACV distribution

So a brand whose four SKUs are each distributed at roughly 60% %ACV has about 240 TDP. A brand selling a single SKU at 60% %ACV has 60 TDP. Same per-SKU reach, very different depth of presence, and TDP catches both at once — it folds how widely the brand is carried together with how many of its SKUs ride along.

The point it's getting at: distribution isn't just "are we on the shelf." It's "how much of the shelf is ours." Adding a second SKU to every store you're already in is a real distribution gain even though your store count and ACV didn't move an inch. TDP is the metric that notices.

ACV vs. TDP: the difference between distribution breadth and depth

ACV by itself answers one question: what fraction of all-commodity volume happens at the stores carrying our brand? It's a yes/no per store, weighted by how much each store matters.

TDP answers a second question: across the stores we're in, how broad is our footprint? Same brand, same stores, but two SKUs per store carries more shelf weight than one.

The rule for which to reach for is straightforward. Use ACV when you're comparing total brand presence across markets, retailers, or time periods; it's the right "are we getting onto shelves" metric. Use TDP when assortment depth is the actual question: line extensions, slot expansion, new pack sizes going into doors you already hold.

A brand that goes from 60% ACV with 1 SKU to 60% ACV with 3 SKUs has tripled its TDP without touching ACV. A pure ACV report would show nothing happened.

How TDP is calculated in practice

The mechanics hinge on what you mean by "SKU." Usually that's the UPC level, but for executive dashboards it sometimes gets rolled up to a brand-line or pack-config level instead.

Compute each SKU's own %ACV distribution, then add them up. Here it is worked across a five-SKU brand:

TDP = 75 + 45 + 20 + 7 + 3 = 150. The broadest SKU sets the brand's own %ACV (here 75%, the stores carrying at least one SKU), and every additional SKU layers its own reach on top.

Two things about this calculation are easy to get wrong.

First, each SKU's %ACV is already ACV-weighted (big stores count more), so you add the SKU-level numbers — you never average them. Averaging these five would hand you 30%, which is not TDP and means nothing.

Second, don't take the brand-level %ACV and multiply it by a raw SKU count. The brand's 75% already lives inside SKU 1's number, so multiplying it back in double-counts. TDP is always built from the item-level %ACVs, summed. (It does happen to equal brand %ACV × the ACV-weighted average number of SKUs carried — but that average has to be ACV-weighted, not a plain per-store count, or the identity breaks.)

Where TDP gets misused

The single biggest trap is using TDP as a one-number performance metric.

A brand can grow TDP three different ways. It can add new doors, with ACV up and SKUs per door flat, which is a genuine distribution win. It can add SKUs to existing doors, with ACV flat and SKUs per door up, which is an assortment win. Or it can lose small doors while gaining large ones, with ACV up through mix shift and SKUs per door flat, which is a quality-of-distribution shift.

Three different commercial stories, and the TDP report puts the same number on all of them. A TDP gain that's pure SKU bloat in doors you already had is nothing like a TDP gain from onboarding a new retailer. So always decompose: ACV change versus SKU-per-door change.

The second trap is comparing TDP across categories. Categories with deep natural assortment, like cereal and bars, support more SKUs per brand per store than categories with narrow assortment, like single-pack beverages. Cross-category TDP comparisons are noise unless you normalize for category-typical SKU counts first.

Using TDP to build the pitch for SKU expansion

For a brand-side analyst, TDP earns its keep building the case, both internal and external, for a new SKU authorization at doors you already hold. The logic runs in three steps.

Start by checking where the brand sits in TDP against the category leader. If you're at 120 TDP and the leader is at 280 TDP in the same retailer, the gap is mostly assortment depth, not distribution breadth. That's a clean argument for a line-extension review with the buyer.

Then find the single-SKU outliers. If 70% of carrying stores hold 2 or more SKUs and the other 30% still carry just 1, those single-SKU stores are your most obvious expansion opportunity. The brand is already authorized there. The buyer simply hasn't widened the set.

Last, look at how the second SKU sells against the first in stores that carry both. If 2-SKU stores show 15% higher total brand velocity per store than 1-SKU stores, that's the number the expansion pitch rests on: the second SKU is lifting the first, probably through category-adjacent placement or plain shopper familiarity.

A wellness supplement brand ran exactly this play with a national natural-chain buyer. 68% of stores carried the original SKU at $38 per store per week. The 22% of stores that also carried the new flavor averaged $51 per store per week on the original SKU. The extra shelf slot was lifting both items, and that single data point won the chain-wide rollout of the second SKU.

TDP benchmarks by category

No TDP number is universally "good," but knowing the category norms keeps you from making the wrong comparison:

The benchmark question isn't "is our TDP good." It's "is our TDP per store in line with our velocity per store." A brand at 240 TDP doing $25 per store per week is carrying SKUs that don't sell. A brand at 80 TDP doing $140 per store per week is moving product efficiently and probably has room to pitch for more SKUs.

Multi-year TDP analysis

TDP's compounding shows up over a 2-to-3-year window. Here's a natural snack brand's TDP trajectory at Sprouts across 36 months:

After Q2 2024, the distribution story is almost entirely SKUs per door. ACV barely budged, 61% to 63%, while TDP climbed from 110 to 176. A brand tracking ACV alone would have written "growth stalled" in the quarterly notes. TDP shows what actually happened: they were deepening their shelf presence in the stores they already had, which is exactly the right move once ACV nears saturation.

TDP per turn: the assortment-efficiency check

A subtler use of TDP tests whether the brand's assortment is earning its keep per SKU. Pair TDP with the category turn rate and brand velocity, and you can see whether each incremental SKU is adding velocity or quietly diluting it.

The calculation: brand velocity ÷ (TDP ÷ category-typical turn). A brand with 200 TDP at $90/store/week in a category where leaders run roughly 6 unit-turns per SKU per week is moving about $90 ÷ (200 ÷ 6) = $2.70 per SKU-store-turn, slightly below the category benchmark for a typical mid-tier brand. A brand at 80 TDP and the same $90/store/week velocity is at $90 ÷ (80 ÷ 6) = $6.75 per SKU-store-turn, materially more efficient on a per-SKU basis.

What this tells you: the higher-TDP brand is carrying more SKUs without a matching velocity gain. Either the line extensions are cannibalizing the original, or the assortment is simply broader than demand justifies. The lower-TDP brand has shelf-efficiency upside: adding a second SKU at its carrying doors would probably lift total brand velocity per door at a better return than the higher-TDP brand's marginal SKU. That's the read that settles whether the next move is "add SKUs" or "rationalize and grow per-SKU velocity."

Pitch decks rarely run this test. Category-managing retailers run it constantly, on their side of the table. A brand walking into a category review at Sprouts or Whole Foods asking for a third SKU at every carrying door had better be able to show that its current 2-SKU stores aren't cannibalizing, that the second SKU added real velocity rather than splitting the existing velocity across two facings. Show up without that evidence and the buyer's default answer is "the math doesn't work for me, come back next reset."

For a brand at the lower-TDP end of its category, the pitch is easy: efficient on shelf, room to grow. For a brand at the higher-TDP end, the buyer's first question is "show me the velocity-per-facing trend over the last 24 months," and the answer has to hold up across cohorts of stores that added SKUs at different times. Anything weaker reads as a brand asking for shelf it hasn't done the work to earn.

Doing this in Scout

Scout shows TDP as a column next to its components (ACV, average SKUs per carrying store, per-store velocity) on every brand and retailer cut pulled from your SPINS extracts. The decomposition sits in the default view, so "TDP up 12%" is one glance from "did we add doors or add SKUs at the doors we had." For the SKU-expansion pitch, the store-level view lets you segment carrying stores by SKU count and compare velocity between 1-SKU and 2-SKU stores directly. That comparison is the data that makes the argument to a buyer.

Summary + further reading

• TDP folds ACV and average SKU count per carrying store into a single distribution-and-depth metric.
• It's a useful summary number, but only once you decompose it into door-count change versus SKUs-per-door change.
• Cross-category TDP comparisons are noisy until you normalize for category-typical assortment depth.
• The SKU-expansion pitch is where TDP earns its keep: if 2-SKU stores out-velocity 1-SKU stores, that's the data argument for authorization.

Related: What is ACV? · Velocity vs. share vs. TDP: which to use when