# Decision checklist: can your two brands share one platform?

Pick one answer per question for the two brands you are weighing up. The score and its reading update as you go. It takes about 15 minutes and works best with one person from marketing and one from IT in the room.

## How the score works

Seven questions, each worth 0 to 2 points, 14 in total. Two of them can override the total: data obligations is a hard stop, and a planned divestment changes what you build even if the score says one platform.

### Catalogue overlap

How much of what the two brands sell is the same kind of product underneath?

- [ ] Most of it: same product types and attributes, sold as subsets or under different names (2 points)
- [ ] Some of it: overlapping product types with a few brand specific attributes (1 point)
- [ ] Almost none: different product types, different attributes, different buying logic (0 points)

### Editorial independence

Who will write and publish for each brand?

- [ ] One shared team that publishes for both brands (2 points)
- [ ] Separate editors who need their own working space but can share the tools (2 points)
- [ ] Separate editors who have been promised their own system as a condition of the deal (0 points)

### Commerce model

How do the two brands sell?

- [ ] The same way: same channel, same pricing logic, same checkout or enquiry route (2 points)
- [ ] A different channel or pricing, but the same order flow behind it (1 point)
- [ ] Fundamentally different: one sells direct with configured quotes, the other through distributors at list prices (0 points)

### Data obligations

Can customer and order data for both brands lawfully sit in one system?

- [ ] Yes: same legal entity, or a group arrangement that already covers shared processing (2 points)
- [ ] Probably, but nobody has asked legal yet (1 point)
- [ ] No: separate legal entities with separate obligations, or a regulator has said so (0 points, hard stop)

### Divestment plans

Is there any plan or live discussion to sell or spin out either brand?

- [ ] No, both brands are core for the foreseeable future (2 points)
- [ ] Possible within a few years, nothing decided (1 point)
- [ ] Yes, planned or in discussion now (0 points)

### Design distance

How different do the two brands need to look and behave?

- [ ] Different identity, same kinds of pages and components: a design token change, not a layout change (2 points)
- [ ] Different identity plus a few brand specific page types or components (1 point)
- [ ] A different interaction model altogether, such as a configurator led site against a catalogue led one (0 points)

### Release cadence

How often does each brand need changes shipped?

- [ ] Similar cadence, and one release affecting both brands is acceptable (2 points)
- [ ] Different cadence, but the changes that differ are content changes, not code releases (1 point)
- [ ] One brand must deploy code on its own schedule and never be blocked by the other (0 points)

### Your result

**11 to 14.** One platform, one content system, brand as a dimension of the content model. Start with the content model, not the front end, and insist that any build brief names the brand dimension. A quote for a second site is the wrong quote.

**7 to 10.** Share the content layer. Then take each question where you scored 0 or 1 and decide whether commerce, data or design is shared or kept separate behind the same front end. Write that split down before anyone prices it.

**0 to 6.** Two builds may be the right answer, or one platform with so many exceptions that the sharing is nominal. Before you commit, check whether the low scores come from facts or assumptions. Editorial independence and data obligations are where assumptions most often get scored as facts.

**If divestment scored 0.** One platform is still possible, but write the exit plan now: which documents, media, domains and integrations leave with the brand, in what format, and who runs the export.

Bring the result and the two lowest scoring questions to the conversation with whoever quoted the second build.