A SKU ("stock keeping unit") is just a short code you give each product so you, and your tools, can tell them apart at a glance. "Lavender Soy Candle, 8 oz" becomes something like LAV-SOY-8OZ. It sounds like big-retail jargon, but for a maker it's the small habit that keeps a growing catalog from turning into chaos.
Why bother with SKUs at all
Once you have more than a handful of products, especially variations of the same thing, names start to collide and counts get confusing. SKUs give every variation a unique, scannable handle, which makes inventory, labels, barcodes, and sales reports all line up.
What makes a good SKU
- Short: long enough to be unique, short enough to read and print on a label.
- Meaningful: you can roughly tell what it is without a lookup (LAV-SOY-8OZ, not 00428).
- Consistent: the same structure every time, so they sort and group neatly.
- Unique: no two products ever share one, including variations.
- Safe characters: letters, numbers, and dashes only; avoid spaces, slashes, and look-alikes like O vs 0.
A simple formula you can reuse
Most makers do well with a few segments separated by dashes: category, style, and size or variation.
- Pick a short code for the product type or category (CDL for candles, SOAP, TEE).
- Add a style or scent (LAV for lavender, MTN for a mountain print).
- Add the variation that makes it distinct (8OZ, L, BLACK).
- Join them with dashes: CDL-LAV-8OZ.
A good SKU answers "which exact product is this?" in a glance, no lookup required.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Re-using a code for two products: the fastest way to corrupt your counts.
- Encoding things that change, like price. When it changes, the SKU lies.
- Going too cryptic: if only you can decode it, it stops saving time.
Let your tool keep them unique
The one rule you can't break is uniqueness, and that's exactly the rule that's easy to slip on by hand. In Keepsel, the products page won't save a product whose SKU is already taken, and from the Maker plan it makes a SKU from the product name for you, checked against every SKU you already use. So your codes stay clean as your catalog grows, and every label and barcode points to exactly one product.
To make a whole list of SKUs at once, with barcodes and a printable label sheet, try the free SKU generator and barcode maker.