SKU (Stock Keeping Unit)
A unique code a business assigns internally to track a specific product variant across its own systems.
In practice
Unlike a UPC or ASIN, a SKU is internal - two different businesses selling the identical product will use their own, different SKUs, since it's built for a company's own inventory and warehouse tracking, not for identifying the product to the outside world.
A shirt sold in three colors and four sizes might get SKUs like SHIRT-BLU-M and SHIRT-BLU-L, so the warehouse can tell every variation apart.
Why it matters
A consistent, logical SKU naming convention makes inventory audits, reordering, and warehouse picking dramatically faster - a messy one is a common hidden cause of fulfillment errors.
Worth knowing
- Entirely internal - unlike a UPC or ASIN, there's no external standard a SKU has to follow.
- Good SKU structures encode useful information directly, like category, color, or size.
- A single physical product typically maps to one SKU per sellable variation, not per unit.
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