Knowing how you want to name you SKUs and creating a strategy as soon as possible is something that will help you stay consistent while you and your business scales higher and higher. Although many companies start their ecommerce business with only a few SKUs, most companies don’t know the full importance of inventory management. Usually, every company knows the importance of inventory management but don’t fully understand that SKU names are definitely a part of that, a big part of that. SKUs allow easy identification of products over many platforms, systems, inventory, and sales orders.
What is a SKU?
SKU stands for Stock Keeping Unit. SKUs are usually made up of letters (also numbers) to help name and identify specific products for inventory management purposes. The letters and numbers in a SKU are there to distinguish products from other products by using different abbreviations and variables. SKUs may include different versions of the products name, size, description, model, material, color, or other specific parameters.
There are multiple places the product’s SKU will appear, on the product, on a sales floor, within your inventory management software, and one the shelf or bin that it is located in a warehouse. These SKUs are unique to your business. Even though a manufacturer might have the same item, the SKU will be different than yours.
Benefits of Proper SKU Naming
Properly naming your SKUs are an important aspect of your inventory management strategy for your company. Well named SKUs can be read and understood by your staff, and it helps your staff understand and know what they are looking for when reading the SKU.
Proper SKU naming brings so many benefits to your business. Things like being able to easily identify your products and their variations. This creates a quick way to convey information through different platforms through your company. Good SKU names can increase efficiency, accuracy, and fulfillment speed. Having these SKUs and your items labeled with those SKUs can decrease the errors that might arise in your fulfillment process. SKU names can help make work easier for your staff while also helping to scale your business.
There are plenty of benefits to creating good SKUs. Here at Launch Fulfillment, we see SKUs and the processes made with them all day every day. We know what works and what doesn’t. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have on your SKUs and how to best name them while being efficient and easy to read. We can’t wait to hear from you.