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Create SKUs That Meet Industry Standards

Lesson 3 from: A Beginner's Guide to Wholesale Sales

Katie Hunt

Create SKUs That Meet Industry Standards

Lesson 3 from: A Beginner's Guide to Wholesale Sales

Katie Hunt

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Lesson Info

3. Create SKUs That Meet Industry Standards

Lesson Info

Create SKUs That Meet Industry Standards

So a skew what the heck is this kill esso and as we go through the course today I am going to talk about some key terms that you'll need to know and be familiar with so sq it's also just called an item number it's something that you determined for your own line it's basically a separate number for each item you sell so that you can help manage your inventory and so that when stores place in order they can notify which card or which candle or which you know whatever product it is that you're selling you know imagine if somebody laura were to say to you yeah I want the necklace that silver you know like we'll have got a lot of that you know what what is it so the skew helps you identify and make sure that everyone understands what they're buying and ordering and stuff and like I said it does help for inventory management as well so stews are really important even if you're not wholesaling because again it'll just help you keep you organized and it also helps you identify how many pieces ...

you have in your collection did you have questions for us the scoop does every option within an item so often item is different sized like eight by ten and fight by seven are they have individual skews or they yes so I would say so because they're different product right and if you were to say I wanted the eight by ten or the five by seven you would want one number for each of them and you need so that yeah, exactly a unique number so you're skew you want to keep them simple and, um and you typically want to use a mix of letters and numbers. Now again, you're the ones to set these so when I say keep it simple, I mean really keep it simple like you want tio like, for example, and I there's a few examples that were coming up on but like in the greeting card world, for example, birthday card might bbd with a number attached to it, but one thing you want to be careful of, which is in my third point here is you want to allow room for growth so you don't want to have let's say you're skew be a number one hundred with a couple of letters at the end because what happens if you get one hundred one in that style, you know, then you kind of then what? You just bump a number? I mean, you make it work, but my point is just when you're thinking about how you want to structure through the excuse, create them in a way that makes sense to you, so going back to the birthday card example b d it's, a birthday card, bds simple to figure out and then a number afterwards gives you that room to grow if you go past a hundred or thousand or whatever numbers you've allotted there it gives you a chance is to grow so in your case going back to your example maybe you have like s m p for small prints and al gp for a large print with a number that follows it and maybe the numbers correspond between the two styles because they're the same design is that correct? Ok so if the styles are the same maybe the number stays the same but the letters are what signify this is a different product does that make sense okay do you have skews for yours laura how do you structure your excuse for what I did was buy the season okay um I don't know if this is a great way to do it but if you talk about just made sense to me so I did like season the color of the metal so like silver or bronze the june s or b and then if there's a size that is very common for jewelry from what I've seen and I think that again you're the ones to make up these codes so they need to be something you understand so that when you're packing employing orders or when you receive an order you know exactly what it's talking about yeah it was one long number for me would be that would be like too confusing, right? Right that's why? I really encourage doing a mix of letters and numbers because it it helps break up the brain a little bit so cool thank you for sharing. Okay um so again allow room for growth don't pigeonhole yourself into anything too narrow like there's simply created one of my alarms she has their candles she has them organized by sent as part of her her skews so you know, do what works for your type of product and what makes sense for the materials you're using for the occasions you're filling you know your products are filling a need for do it based around what you're offering and what makes sense to you to keep things simple organized if they get too complicated it it just gets too overwhelming for the retailers as well as for you. Okay, so no your industry standards this is really important for your product line you need to do your homework on this one every industry is different and there's a lot of things to consider but you know product sizes are people using for the candles you know are they using a certain enclosure at a certain for a certain reason? What is the pricing? What is the going rate? The market rate packaging somebody had asked in the chat room I think about packaging there's a reason often times why people if you look around your industry and see that a lot of people are doing something one way there's likely a logical and financial reason for it. So one thing, too, is the styles like how many styles are they offering? Well, I wanted tio provide an example of how greeting cards are just one example. Forgetting cars. An industry standard is that most greeting cards are vertical. If you go into a home often stuff, they're mostly vertical. Not many people do horizontal cards, and the reason for that is they take up less shelf on the earth. I'm sorry they take up less space on the shelf and so there's certain things like that, like I was talking about the candle enclosures or perhaps in jewelry, there's. Other things like that where there's a reason behind the madness there's a reason so people in the greeting card boiled. For instance, they do the vertical cards because it takes up left less room on the shelf and retailers conf itm or cards. They can fit more, which means that they're making more money on their space, right? So no, the knowing those industry standards. Before you start wholesaling and making sure that your products are in line with them, keep me. This is one of the areas that I want. Ask you when I started, I like the horizontal. I just like designing for that. I like the way it looked, so I did a lot of pattern work, and I'm like, oh, I like so knowing what those industry standards are and trying to find out, the reasoning behind them is really critical.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials

Beginners Guide To Wholesale Starter Kit

Bonus Materials with Purchase

A Beginner's Guide To Wholesale Sales Workbook

Ratings and Reviews

Katy Casey
 

AMAZING, amazing course and fabulous instructor. Katie knows so much and does a fantastic job sharing specific, actionable insight in this course and the entire bundle. I can already tell that it's a resource I'll reference again and again as I grow my product line and I'm so happy I invested the time in it.

Laura Bridges
 

Katie is a very straight-forward and encouraging teacher. I was fortunate to be in the studio audience for this group of classes and have learned so much! I have had some help from friends in the industry on setting up wholesaling, however I was missing a set structure and strategy to get it off the ground professionally and timely. She makes the steps very clear, with ideas and references on how to do it or outsource what you need done. Katie ads her own experience to all of these steps, which is so helpful to hear. If you want clear, specific, strategic steps to take next to develop your own successful wholesale business, these are the classes! Katie is awesome! Thank you!!

Danielle Jones
 

I've taken 14 pages of notes with great guidelines and best practices for pricing, SKUS, releases and more. I'm feeling much more confident knowing the standards after taking this course. Katie is amazing!

Student Work

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