Corriemoor Outdoors product portfolio
BCG matrix slide with six product lines on a three by three grid
A BCG matrix slide is useful when every product line sits in one cell with its revenue, so the room sees both where the money comes from and where it might come from next. This one places six lines for Corriemoor Outdoors, a fictional retailer with $25.5M in FY27 revenue.
What is on the slide
- Title
- Growth Share, Corriemoor. Six product lines by market growth and relative share. FY27 revenue $25.5M in total.
- High growth row
- Question Marks: packrafts, $0.9M. Contenders: ultralight tents, $2.4M. Stars: trail running packs, $6.8M.
- Middle growth row
- Laggards: no line placed. Core: hiking boots, $5.1M. Leaders: no line placed.
- Low growth row
- Dogs: car roof boxes, $0.7M. Holders: no line placed. Cash Cows: down jackets, $9.6M.
- Axes
- Relative market share, low to high, left to right. Market growth, high to low, top to bottom.
When this is the right slide
Choose this slide when a business has several product lines competing in measurable categories and the meeting must decide which to fund, hold or drop, with revenue beside every placement.
What to swap it for
Grouping: Ansoff Growth Matrix. Swap to the Ansoff growth matrix when the question is where new growth comes from, sorted by new or existing products and markets, rather than how the current lines perform.
What this slide shows
A title reads Growth Share, Corriemoor, with a framing line: Corriemoor Outdoors, six product lines by market growth and relative share, FY27 revenue $25.5M in total. The grid has nine cells in three rows and three columns. The horizontal axis is relative market share from low on the left to high on the right; the vertical axis is market growth from high at the top to low at the bottom. The top row reads Question Marks with packrafts at $0.9M, Contenders with ultralight tents at $2.4M, and Stars with trail running packs at $6.8M. The middle row reads Laggards with no line placed, Core with hiking boots at $5.1M, and Leaders with no line placed. The bottom row reads Dogs with car roof boxes at $0.7M, Holders with no line placed, and Cash Cows with down jackets at $9.6M. The six revenue figures add to $25.5M. Each cell is a teal card with its label in bold and the product line as a single bullet.
When this is the right slide
Use it in a portfolio review, an annual planning session or a board paper where the question is which product lines to fund, hold or exit. The matrix works best when the lines are comparable businesses competing in identifiable categories, so that growth and share can be measured the same way for each. It is the wrong slide when the question is how to grow rather than where the money is now; that belongs on an Ansoff grid, which sorts options by what is new about them. It is also the wrong slide when share data is guesswork, because the horizontal position is the whole argument and a confident placement on a weak estimate is worse than a table that admits the gap.
How to adapt it
First, define growth and share once and use the same definitions for every line. Category growth and relative share are the usual pair; write both in the notes. Second, put revenue beside each name so that the funding question has a scale, and check that the figures add to the total in the framing line. Third, decide what the empty cells mean before presenting. On this grid nothing sits in the Leaders cell, which suggests the business has no line that is both dominant and still growing steadily, and that observation is often more useful to a board than the placements themselves. If the room will ask what happens next for the question mark, prepare a follow up slide with the investment needed to move packrafts to the right, rather than squeezing the business case into the cell. Present the grid with the same definitions every year so that movement between cells becomes a story the board can follow: a line drifting from Stars toward Core is an early warning that a category is maturing, long before revenue starts to fall.
What makes this slide work
Revenue sits beside every placement
Down jackets, $9.6M. Packrafts, $0.9M. Each name carries its FY27 revenue, and the six figures add to the $25.5M in the framing line. A growth share grid without revenue tells the room where lines sit; with revenue it tells them how much of the business sits there, which is what the funding decision actually turns on.
Cells are relabelled to match the axes
Question Marks sit at high growth and low share, Stars at high growth and high share, Cash Cows at low growth and high share, Dogs at low growth and low share. The five cells between carry plain names such as Core and Contenders. Every label agrees with its position on the axes, so nobody has to translate the grid before reading it.
Empty cells say so
Laggards, Leaders and Holders each read no line placed. That is honest about a six line portfolio on a nine cell grid, and it shows the shape of the business: weight at the corners, nothing in the middle right. A grid that hid its empty cells would make Corriemoor look more balanced than it is.
Questions people ask
Why use a three by three BCG grid instead of the classic two by two?
The middle row and column give a home to lines that are neither clearly growing nor clearly declining, which is where most real product lines sit. On a two by two, hiking boots would be forced into star or cash cow and the discussion would be about the label. The nine cells let the slide say core, which is accurate and less contentious.
How many product lines can a BCG matrix slide hold?
Six to nine is comfortable, with no more than three in any cell. Beyond that the names shrink and the grid stops being readable from the back of the room. A business with twenty lines should group them into families first, or show the top revenue lines and list the rest in an appendix table with the same growth and share measures.
Should empty cells be labelled on a BCG slide?
Yes. An empty Leaders cell is a finding: no line has both high share and middling growth. Writing no line placed tells the audience the cell was considered rather than forgotten. Deleting the label or the cell breaks the grid, and the eye then reads the remaining cells as a different, smaller framework than the one the slide claims to be.
What measures should sit behind the axes?
Market growth is usually the annual growth of the category the line competes in, not the line's own sales growth. Relative share is the line's share divided by the largest rival's share. State both definitions in the speaker notes and in the written paper, because a board member who assumes the line's own growth will read every placement differently.
When should a BCG slide be followed by another slide?
When a placement implies an action that costs money. A question mark such as packrafts invites the question of whether to fund it or drop it, and that decision needs its own slide with the investment, the expected share gain and a date. The matrix shows the portfolio; it should not also carry the business case for each line.
Can a BCG matrix slide replace a revenue chart?
No. The grid places lines by growth and share, and the revenue figure beside each name is context, not a comparison the eye can make. If the room needs to compare revenue, show a sorted bar chart on the next slide. Bubble sizes would help, but a bubble chart drawn by hand is easy to misjudge and hard to read on a projector.
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