Uncharted Part 3 – Variwide
After the Waterfall, today we are going to introduce you another less-known but very useful chart. The Variwide (otherwise known as Marimekko) is also part of think-cell’s arsenal but it can also be ‘homemade’. Variwide basically consists of columns of different widths adding up to 100%, which looks something like this:
This slide shows the sales of the Indian car manufacturer Tata Motors in 2008. The left column shows the Indian sales while the right one illustrates sales in other locations (RoW, Rest of the World). The columns’ widths represent the sizes of the two geographical areas relative to each other: Tata sold more than half a million vehicles in India while only fifty-five thousand in the rest of the world. If we look at the certain columns we can see that they consist of five bands as Tata is active in five different segments (Light CV, Heavy CV, Small, Mid and Utility). The small cars represent 26% of the Indian sales while this ratio is only 4% in the other locations. The coloring of the bands is not random either: the two grey shades indicate the Commercial Vehicles category while the blue ones indicate Passenger Cars.
This chart summarized a lot of information, yet it is still transparent. With these, variwide fulfills the two main criteria of a good chart. But just like with a real beast, you have to be careful with this creature as well. Due to the high information density, variwide should be applied only in certain situations.
One of these situations – as it can be seen above – is the summary of corporate sales. Here among others we can segment by products, geographic areas or consumer demographics (age, income, etc.). It can be exceptionally effective to start analyzing a company with a variwide chart as this way the structure of corporate sales and focus areas can be introduced quickly (see also: Pareto-principle). Another field of application is competitor analysis. Here as well it is simple to illustrate the main clusters/product types (in the example below: operating systems) and the market shares of competitors within those.
The presentation of corporate sales and competitor analysis is an integral part of case studies. Of course variwide can be applied in other ways as well, however, those discoveries are waiting for you. Chart up!