Frequently asked questions
What makes a good SKU format?
Short segments (2–4 characters), all caps, hyphen-separated, most-general to most-specific: LINE-CATEGORY-VARIANT-SEQUENCE. Avoid meaningless random SKUs (humans can't sanity-check them) and avoid over-encoding (price or supplier in the SKU goes stale). 8–16 characters total handles almost any catalog.
Should SKUs ever start with a zero or contain special characters?
No leading zeros on the whole SKU (spreadsheets strip them) and nothing beyond letters, digits and hyphens — marketplaces reject or mangle slashes, spaces and symbols. Zero-padding belongs inside the sequence segment (001, 002) where it keeps sorting correct.
Is a SKU the same as a barcode or UPC?
No. The SKU is your internal identifier — free, structured your way, unique per variant in your catalog. UPC/EAN/GTIN are purchased global identifiers the retail ecosystem shares. A product typically has both; this tool generates the internal one.
How do I handle variants like size and color?
Each sellable variant gets its own SKU — one per size-color combination, not one per product. List your variant codes (BLK-S, BLK-M, RED-S…) and the generator produces the full matrix, which is exactly the row set your inventory system expects.
More merchant tools
- UTM Link Builder — If the link isn't tagged, the sale has no source — and your best channel looks identical to your worst.
- Discount Code Generator — Single-use codes stop coupon-site leakage — but nobody types 500 of them by hand.
- Product URL Slug Generator — The URL is the first thing search engines read about a product page — make it say something.
- All tools
- All calculators