What Do ACV, TDP, and Velocity Actually Mean?

Dollars = Units × average retail price. Units = distribution × velocity. ACV measures a store's size in dollars [1]; % ACV distribution measures how much of a market's volume flows through stores carrying your product [2]; TDP sums % ACV across your items [3]; and velocity is a family of measures describing how fast you sell where you are available. Learn that decomposition and most of a syndicated report stops being mysterious.

The decomposition that organizes everything

Every sales number breaks down twice, and both levels matter.

The first level is price and quantity. Dollars are units multiplied by average retail price, so dollar growth can come from selling more, from selling at a higher price, or from a mix shift toward larger or more expensive items. A brand celebrating dollar growth without checking units may simply have taken price.

The second level sits underneath units. Units are distribution multiplied by velocity, so unit growth comes from being in more places, from selling faster where you are, or both. The two have different owners: distribution is won in headquarters meetings, velocity is won at the shelf.

Running both levels together is growth decomposition, and it is the difference between "we grew 20%" and "we grew 20%, of which 12 points came from new distribution, 5 from price, and 3 from genuine rate-of-sale improvement." Only the last of those is proof that the product is working.

ACV: store size, measured in dollars

ACV, all commodity volume, is the total dollar sales of a store, retailer or market across every product it sells [1]. Your brand's performance is not in it; ACV is about the store. A large supercenter might carry ACV in the tens of millions, while a small-format rural supermarket carries a fraction of that. Both are measured, because both are covered.

ACV exists to be a weighting base [1]. Once every store has a size in dollars, "how distributed am I?" can be answered by volume rather than by headcount.

% ACV distribution: weighted, not counted

% ACV distribution is the share of a market's total ACV flowing through the stores that sell your product: the ACV of stores carrying you, divided by the total ACV of all stores in the market, times 100 [2].

It runs on a scale of 0 to 100, and reading it that way makes it intuitive. Zero means you sold nowhere in the market. One hundred means you sold in stores accounting for every retail dollar in it. Forty means the stores carrying you represent forty cents of every retail dollar spent in that market, not that forty percent of stores carry you.

Run the intuition with round numbers. A market has 100 stores. Your product sits in only 10 of them, but they are the 10 biggest, together doing 30% of the market's all-commodity dollars. Your numeric distribution, a plain store count, is 10%. Your % ACV distribution is 30%. Placement in a high-volume store counts for more, by design [1][4].

Two versions of the measure appear in extracts and they are not interchangeable. Average % ACV averages across the weeks in a period. Maximum % ACV takes the highest weekly figure the item reached. Derived measures such as average items carried are built on one or the other, and providers differ in their nomenclature.

TDP: breadth and depth in one number

Brands are portfolios of items. TDP, total distribution points, is the sum of % ACV distribution across all of a brand's items in a market [3].

The canonical example: five items, each at 40% ACV, gives the brand 200 TDPs. So does ten items at 20. TDP deliberately mixes breadth with depth into one scale of total shelf presence [3], which makes it the standard denominator for productivity.

Unlike % ACV, TDP is not capped at 100, because it is a sum of percentages rather than a percentage itself. A 10-item brand can approach 1,000 in a market. Any TDP figure above 100 is normal; any item-level % ACV above 100 is an error.

Two consequences follow. A distribution-led growth story shows up as TDP climbing. And a delisting shows up as TDP falling before your sales fall, which makes TDP trend one of the earliest warnings in the dataset.

Velocity: a family, not a metric

Velocity, also called productivity, measures how fast a product sells where it is actually available. It is not a single calculation. It is a family of measures that answer the same question against different denominators, and the denominator is the whole story.

The common members:

• Dollars per point of % ACV distribution ($/SPP): revenue per point of weighted distribution held. This is typically used as a brand velocity metric because it takes the maximum distribution of a brand and does not capture the breadth of items.
• Dollars per TDP ($/TDP): revenue per total distribution point. The better read on a full portfolio, because TDP counts every item, including widely distributed ones that turn slowly.
• Units or dollars per store per week (SPW): rate of sale in an average selling store. The plainest version, and typically the one that feels most tangible.
• Units per TDP: the same logic as $/TDP on a volume basis, useful when pricing is moving and you want demand isolated from it.

Never compare a figure built on one denominator to a figure built on another. They are different measures that read performance in different ways.

Why buyers care is worth stating plainly, because it explains the whole chapter. A buyer has finite shelf space and a difficult job: balancing staple products that reliably turn, innovation that brings in new shoppers, and enough incremental volume to grow the category without cannibalizing the base. Velocity is how she decides which items earn their space.

Choosing between $/SPP and $/TDP

The two are not competing answers; they read different things.

Take two brands with identical dollar sales. One holds 40% maximum % ACV, the other 20%. On $/SPP the second brand is producing twice the revenue per point of distribution it holds, which is a straightforward argument that it deserves more. That is a brand-level read, and it is the one to bring to an expansion conversation.

Now take a brand with 12 items, 4 of which are broadly distributed and slow. $/SPP on the hero item looks strong while the portfolio quietly drags. $/TDP catches that, because TDP sums across every item and the slow ones raise the denominator without contributing sales. If you are being judged on your whole shelf presence, $/TDP is the honest measure.

Distribution and velocity move against each other

There is a mechanical relationship that catches people during expansion. When you win new distribution, TDP rises immediately. The new stores, however, take time to build a rate of sale: shoppers have to find the item, the shelf position may be poor, and the first weeks are slow. Because TDP is the denominator, measured velocity falls even though nothing about underlying demand has deteriorated.

The read to watch is stabilization. Velocity flattening out a few periods after an expansion is healthy. Velocity continuing to climb while distribution expands is a strong signal. Velocity still falling several periods later is the case worth investigating, because by then the new stores should be contributing.

This matters in the buyer conversation, because a buyer looking at a velocity decline without knowing about your expansion is looking at what appears to be a failing product.

Comparing fairly

Dollar sales comparisons typically flatter whoever has more distribution. Velocity removes that advantage, which makes it the fairest small-brand argument in the dataset.

	Sales (12 wk)	TDP	$/TDP
Brand A (you)	$500,000	200	$2,500
Brand B (incumbent)	$600,000	400	$1,500

Brand B outsells you by $100,000 and a naive ranking puts it first. Per point of distribution you outsell it $2,500 to $1,500. That table is the expansion pitch: at current velocity, the same shelf held by Brand A produces materially more for the category. The caveat from the previous section applies: some of that advantage will compress as distribution grows, and saying so before the buyer does is credibility rather than weakness.

A note on volume measures

Dollars and units are not the only volume bases. EQ units, equivalized units, convert volume to a common unit of measure so items of different sizes can be compared and summed. A six-pack and a twelve-pack are two units but not two equal quantities of product. Whenever your set contains mixed pack sizes, which is most of the time, EQ is the volume basis that will not mislead you.

Reading them together

The measures earn their keep as a system. Sales up 20%: is that TDP up 20% at flat velocity, meaning you got distribution and demand is unproven? Or TDP flat with velocity up 20%, meaning the product is pulling? Or neither, because price moved and units did not? Sales flat while TDP doubled means velocity halved, and the buyer's analyst will see that even if your topline slide never mentions it.

What happens when the math is not enforced is the subject of the aggregation trap.

Common questions

What is a good % ACV distribution? Category- and channel-dependent; there is no universal threshold. The useful reads are relative: your % ACV against the category leaders, and your trend against last year. A new brand at 15% in natural might be thriving while an established conventional brand at 40% is in trouble.

What is the difference between % ACV and numeric distribution? Numeric distribution counts stores; % ACV weights them by all-commodity dollar volume [1][2]. Ten small stores can represent less % ACV than two supercenters. Syndicated reporting defaults to the weighted version because store sizes vary so widely.

Which velocity measure should I use? Depends what you are reading and trying to understand. $/SPP for a brand, $/TDP for a portfolio, units or dollars per store per week for the plainest store-level read.

Can TDP exceed 100? Yes, routinely. TDP sums % ACV across items, so a 10-item brand can approach 1,000 in a market [3]. Item-level % ACV is capped at 100; TDP is not, because it is not a percentage.

Why did my velocity drop after I gained distribution? Because TDP is the denominator and it rose before the new stores built a rate of sale. Watch for stabilization over the following periods rather than reacting to the first reading.