Want to create a SKU system for your products? Here's a great primer: https://fitsmallbusiness.com/sku-numbers/ We're diving into Episode 5 of "Making It"! Today, we're unlocking the mysteries of SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) and trust me, they're game-changers! 🛍️ Ever wondered about their magic in business? Or how they powered our multi-million-dollar venture? Get ready for SKU secrets, sales tracking magic, and market research gold. ✨ Join me in this SKU-tacular episode, and don't forget those show notes for extra gems! 🎧💕 TRANSCRIPT: Whatever the flavor of the day, the industry reports say, it's kind of like how, I don't know if you used to read cosmopolitan magazine, but every single month it was, here's a new diet plan, right? And not all of them are working. In fact, none of them work. That's why they launched a new one every month. Hey, it's episode number five. And today we're going to talk about SKUs, stock keeping units, man, there are so many acronyms that get thrown around and we'll have to include a glossary because There's just a lot, but SKU is one of the most important ones that you can know about, learn about, and think about. So important that we're dedicating at least two episodes to it. I know, right? There is possibly, aside from pricing, maybe nothing more important in your business than having a good product variety strategy. That is a good SKU strategy. So stick around, stay tuned, and we will talk some SKUs. Welcome to making it the business of making and selling products where passion meets profit and each episode explores what it takes to make it with experts sharing their insights on building a business from ideation to manufacturing to marketing to scaling and beyond. I'm your host Danielle. My husband and I started a soap and cologne business in 2013 and grew it to nearly 4 million in revenue in 2022. We bled sweat and ugly cried over every aspect of this. It was a lonely road, but it doesn't have to be. I am on a quest to end entrepreneurial loneliness and enjoy the wild ride with you. So let's get to making it. Hello dear listeners, today we're gonna dive into a foundational element of retail and inventory management, which is the SKU now SKU is spelled S K U and it stands for stock keeping unit. If you've ever purchased something from a store or online, you've encountered a SKU. That's what it is. It's a different product type. A SKU is basically a unique identifier for every distinct product and service available for purchase. At its core, it's a code, but it's a combination of numbers and letters, usually which indicates to the retailer and to wholesalers what product it is, what family it's from etc. For example, with Our outlaw SKUs, we have the first four characters to identify the scent and the last, and then a hyphen, which is our separator. And then the last three characters to identify what product type it is. So if it's a Blazing Saddles bar of handmade soap, it's called BLAZ. Hyphen b a r. And if there's different sizes, we add a suffix to that with the size. So for example, if we sold one ounce bars of soap and four ounce bars of soap, which we don't, but it would be B L a Z hyphen, b a r hyphen four or hyphen one, depending on how much it weighed. So that's basically our skew structure at. Outlaw, you can decide what SKU structure works for you, and I'm going to link to a terrific article on this in the show notes, so click on through to it if you haven't yet worked out your SKU structure. One of the things that I want to caution you about is changing SKUs. You want to start with a structure that works for you and that is scalable. So that will grow as you grow. You don't want to be locked into a SKU. Structure that doesn't work for you as you grow because changing SKUs is a really big deal. It's not a small deal at all. In fact, on Amazon, they won't even let you change your product SKU ever. So that's all carved in stone. And if you accidentally entered the wrong SKU, or if you have a SKU change, you're stuck with that old SKU. So why are SKUs so crucial in business? Imagine running a store with hundreds or thousands of products like Amazon does and trying to keep track of everything without a system. It would be very chaotic, right? SKUs help businesses organize their products systematically. So the organization helps. In a broader sense, SKUs are more than just about inventory tracking, they offer insights. For example, because all of our SKUs are categorized by the scent prefix, and the product type suffix, I can run a report based on a SKU that contains all the SKUs that have bar in them. And I can see all of the handmade bar soap, or I can run a report that has the phrase blaze in it, B L A Z. And I can see all of the blazing saddles. Sales across all of the product types. And I can see if, relatively speaking, our lotion is selling better in Blazing Saddles or Calamity Jane by running L O T SKU report and I can ...
