Vendor - Creating an SKU
When creating an SKU, you need to think long term. The SKU needs to be easily identifiable by you.
For example: if you are selling paintings, the easiest thing to do is to just create an SKU named “PAINT1”, “PAINT2”, “PAINT3” etc. This is not thinking long term. What if, in future, you decide to use different mediums for your paintings(oil, acrylic, watercolour etc), or you decide to do different categories (abstract, cubism, realism, surrealism etc) You then decide to add different theme (nature, cityscapes, space, animals, people, scenery etc.), different titled pieces. You decide to not just do your paintings on canvas, but offering print or digital versions. The variations are constantly evolving. Not just variations, but additional products. You decide to branch out to sculping, sketching, woodwork, leatherwork.
Best thing to do, is think about any possible variations of your product and applying that to generating your SKU.
In this scenario you are an artist
1. Identify your product
Example
Canvas Surrealist Oil Painting – The Man in the Wardrobe (theme – dreamscape)
2. List your product characteristics according to importance (use your own discretion)
Example
Product type: Painting
Material: Canvas
Medium: Oil
Category: Surrealist
Theme: Dreamscape
Title: The Man in the Wardrobe
3. Use letters and numbers in your SKU, you can even hyphenate. The easiest way of going about creating an SKU is to use the first letter of each characteristic that you have listed in step 2.
Steer clear of using special characters ($@&) forward- and backslashes. These characters tend to cause issues with accounting systems and other systems you may want to integrate with in future.
P – Painting
C – Canvas
O – Oil
S – Surrealist
D – Dreamscape
MW – The Man in the Wardrobe
Put together it gives you your SKU: PCO-SD-MW
So for each oil painting you do on canvas you will start your SKU with “PCO”. Then your category and theme following the hyphen, followed then by the title of your piece after yet another hyphen. This will ensure easy categorisation.
Please note that a lot of thought needs to go into creating an SKU. Much like a painting, it is a lot of work at first, but it will pay off in the long run.
Centurion Community Site is a site the provides information and useful tools to individuals and businesses that are based in and around Centurion.
