Good SKUs are short, human-readable and unique. Never start a SKU with 0 or use ambiguous characters like the letter O and the number 0, or the letter I and the number 1.
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A SKU (stock-keeping unit) is a short internal code you assign to a product so you can track it in inventory, point of sale and shipping. Unlike a barcode you buy, a SKU is yours to design, which means a good one tells you what the item is at a glance. The generator above turns a prefix, a few attributes and a running number into clean, consistent codes for every variant.
A SKU is an internal identifier, unique to your business, that points to one specific product variant: a particular color, size or style. You read it left to right, from the broadest attribute to the most specific. TSH-BLA-M-1001 says t-shirt, black, medium, item 1001. Because you control the format, a SKU can carry meaning your team recognizes instantly without looking anything up.
This is where SKUs differ from UPCs and barcodes. A UPC is a 12-digit number issued by GS1 that stays the same wherever a product sells, so it identifies the item globally. A barcode is just the scannable image, and it can encode either a UPC or your own SKU. The SKU itself is the human-readable code underneath: yours to design, yours to keep consistent.
Start with structure. Decide the segments your codes will always carry, usually a category or brand prefix, one or two attributes, then a running number, and keep that order for every product. Consistency is what makes a SKU system useful: when every code follows the same pattern, anyone on your team can read it without a legend.
Favor readability. Abbreviate words to two or three letters, uppercase everything, and pick abbreviations a new hire would guess. Use a fixed-length running number with zero padding, like 1001, so codes sort cleanly and you can see at a glance how many variants exist. A separator such as a hyphen or underscore makes the segments easy to scan; the generator lets you switch between them.
Set rules and stick to them. Keep total length in a sensible range, roughly 8 to 16 characters, so codes fit on a label and can be read aloud. Never reuse a retired SKU for a new product, because old sales data still references it. And make uniqueness non-negotiable: two items must never share a code.
The most common mistake is starting a SKU with a leading zero. Spreadsheets and many systems strip it, so 0451 silently becomes 451 and your codes stop matching. Begin the meaningful part with a letter and let the running number sit at the end instead.
Avoid special characters and lookalikes. Spaces, slashes and accented letters break exports and scanners, so stick to plain letters, numbers and a single separator. Skip characters that are easy to confuse when typed or read aloud, like the letter O against the number 0, or the letter I against the number 1. Finally, never embed the price. Prices change constantly, but a SKU should stay fixed for the life of the product; bake in a price and every change forces a relabel and breaks your history.
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