Failures & lessons learned
How to identify product lines that are bleeding resources and make data-driven decisions to sunset them.
In smart, data-informed companies, recognizing underperforming product lines is essential for reallocating capital, sharpening focus, and preserving long-term growth while maintaining customer value and operational discipline.
Published by
Andrew Scott
July 25, 2025 - 3 min Read
When a business grows through a portfolio approach, it collects many offerings, each with its own costs, revenue potential, and strategic fit. Over time, some lines drain more resources than they return, silently eroding margins and curbing the ability to invest in core strengths. The first step is to establish objective thresholds for performance that go beyond vanity metrics like early sales spikes. Track profitability, contribution margins, and working capital impact for every product line, and map these against product lifecycle stages. In practice, this requires aligning finance, product management, and marketing to create a shared understanding of which lines fail to cover their ongoing expenses, including overhead and customer acquisition costs.
Data alone does not decide sunsetting; it provides the lens through which to judge tradeoffs. To turn numbers into decisions, create a clear sunset framework with criteria such as unit economics, growth velocity, and strategic alignment. Build dashboards that slice results by channel, region, and customer segment to see where persistent losses live. Incorporate quality signals such as churn, support intensity, and feature requests that hint at diminishing value. Then test scenarios that remove a line from the roadmap: how will it affect retained revenue, the cost structure, and time to profitability for the remaining portfolio? The aim is to tilt resources toward opportunities with higher ceiling and lower friction.
Use scenario planning to reallocate resources toward stronger opportunities.
A disciplined sunset process begins with a formal review cadence that is predictable and transparent. Schedule quarterly portfolio assessments that scrutinize each line’s unit economics, demand signals, and optionality for future enhancement. Document the rationale behind every decision and ensure cross-functional sign-off from product, sales, operations, and finance. This structured approach reduces political risk and preserves trust with stakeholders who rely on predictability. In addition, embed a policy that allows credible underperformers to be paused temporarily while teams validate whether market conditions could improve. The visibility of the review fosters accountability and signals that the company prioritizes efficiency and strategic alignment over sunk costs.
As you evaluate lines, distinguish between temporary turbulence and structural misalignment. Short-term downturns might justify continued investment if there is a credible plan to reach break-even, but persistent drag that resists improvement requires more decisive action. Develop a data-driven sunset playbook that includes a predefined set of conditions for easing resources, such as reducing marketing spend, renegotiating supplier terms, or re-scoping the product with a lighter feature set. Communicate the potential outcomes clearly to teams, and ensure that customers affected by sunset options receive transition support. The process should protect continuity for high-value customers while safeguarding the company’s capital allocation discipline.
Build clear, measurable criteria and execute with disciplined timing.
When a line is flagged for sunset, the first obligation is to minimize disruption to customers and to the brand’s credibility. Communicate with precision about the rationale, timeline, and practical effects on service levels, support, and pricing. Offer a graceful transition path, including sunset windows, migration assistance, or curated alternatives that meet similar needs. Simultaneously, reallocate personnel and budget toward lines with proven demand, tighter margins, and strategic fit. The reallocation should be incremental yet decisive, ensuring that the organization can maintain momentum in core areas while reducing exposure to weaker bets. A well-managed wind-down preserves legacy relationships and protects morale.
Operational changes should follow a tightly coordinated plan. Align product roadmaps, content calendars, and customer communications so that sunset activities do not create confusion or frustration. Update incident handling, onboarding, and renewal processes to reflect the new portfolio reality. Repurpose teams’ time toward revenue-generating activities and high-probability initiatives. Measure the impact of sunset actions on cash flow, inventory levels, and support ticket volumes to confirm that the wind-down yields the intended relief. Maintaining discipline in execution is as critical as making the initial determination, because it sustains trust with leadership and customers alike.
Communicate decisively and support a smooth transition for all stakeholders.
A robust framework begins with explicit profitability targets that consider both direct costs and implicit investments. For each product line, calculate gross margin, contribution margin, and the effect on shared resources such as infrastructure and platform services. Then add a strategic overlay: does the line contribute to brand positioning, ecosystem benefits, or partner leverage? Often, a line may lose money yet play a vital role in a broader strategy; in such cases, sunset decisions must weigh strategic value against financial drain. Document these assessments, and ensure that the rationale is accessible to the entire organization to prevent misinterpretation or misalignment during the sunset period.
The most durable decisions emerge when data supports a clear narrative, not when emotions drive the outcome. Use a combination of quantitative signals and qualitative feedback from customers and frontline teams. Gather insights on why a product is no longer compelling, whether competitors have offered better value, and whether costs have risen due to changes in technology or supply chains. Translate these insights into a concrete action plan with milestones, owners, and success criteria. A transparent storytelling approach reduces resistance and helps teams see sunset not as a loss but as a pivot toward greater impact and sustainability.
Measure outcomes, learn, and refine the process for future cycles.
Effective sunset decisions hinge on proactive communication to customers, partners, and internal audiences. Prepare a concise, customer-centered message that explains the transition, timing, and available alternatives. Train support and account managers to handle questions with empathy and factual clarity. Internally, publish a roadmap that clarifies how the wind-down frees capital for higher-priority investments and how teams will redeploy their skills. By aligning messaging with data, you reduce confusion and preserve trust. The objective is to treat the sunset as a deliberate, value-preserving move rather than a reactive cut, reinforcing the company’s commitment to its customers and its strategic priorities.
Build a post-sunset plan that sustains momentum and preserves core values. Reinvest reclaimed resources into the most promising products, scale successful experiments, and tighten cost controls across the portfolio. Track the long-term effects on revenue quality, customer retention, and gross margins. Establish a living dashboard that updates leadership on progress toward the reallocation goals and on any new risks that arise. This forward-looking posture ensures that the sunset yields a cleaner, stronger business model with clearer priorities and improved agility.
After sunset actions are completed, conduct a retrospective to extract lessons that improve future portfolio management. Analyze what signals surfaced early, which thresholds were most predictive, and how communication affected stakeholder reactions. Capture best practices for evaluating lines, including any blind spots or data gaps that slowed decision-making. The goal is to convert anecdotal experiences into repeatable rules that shorten cycle times and increase confidence in the portfolio decisions. By institutionalizing learning, the company grows more proficient at allocating resources and sustaining steady, sustainable growth across the remaining lines.
Finally, embed a culture of continual optimization that treats resource allocation as an ongoing responsibility rather than a one-off exercise. Regularly revisit product performance against evolving market conditions, customer preferences, and competitive dynamics. Encourage cross-functional experimentation to test high-leverage changes and to prove the value of every decision. When teams know that sunsets are part of a disciplined governance model, they stay vigilant for early signs of misalignment and are empowered to propose timely pivots. The result is a healthier portfolio, clearer strategic focus, and a durable path to long-term value creation.
