Range plan in one hand, keyboard in the other
The autumn range is signed off: sixty styles, most in two or three colours, sizes 6 to 18. That is well over a thousand variants. Someone now opens the range plan spreadsheet and starts building SKUs by hand, following a pattern that lives in their head: style code, colour code, size. Then barcodes, taken from the next free numbers in your GS1 allocation, copied across one by one. Then the same data goes into Shopify, the warehouse system, the factory's purchase orders and the care label order.
It takes days. Somewhere in there, a barcode is used twice, a colour code is mistyped, or the size 18 is missing for one colour. Nobody notices until the goods arrive and a carton will not scan.
Why setup is still manual
Each system wants the data in its own shape. The store wants products with options, the warehouse wants a flat SKU list with barcodes, the factory wants purchase order lines, and the label supplier wants care and composition with sizes. None of them talk to the range plan, which is where the decisions were actually made.
- The SKU pattern is a convention, not a rule enforced anywhere.
- Barcodes are allocated from a spreadsheet of used numbers that someone must keep current.
- The same style data is re-entered into three or four systems.
- Late changes to the range, such as a dropped colour, have to be chased through all of them.
What the errors cost
| Mistake | Where it bites |
|---|---|
| Duplicate barcode | Goods-in cannot tell two items apart |
| Missing size variant | Stock arrives with nowhere to go on the site |
| Wrong colour code | Picking errors and mismatched photos |
| Late range change not carried through | Factory makes a colour you dropped |
| Days of setup | Launch dates held up by data entry |
How we generate a season from the range plan
- We take your range plan in the shape you already use, usually a spreadsheet, and agree the columns that matter: style, colour, size range, price, product type, fabric composition.
- SKUs are generated to your pattern as a fixed rule, so every one follows it exactly.
- Barcodes are issued from your allocated number range, with the check digit calculated and a register of every number used, so none is ever reused.
- Checks run before anything is pushed: missing sizes, duplicate codes, unknown colour codes, blank prices and compositions.
- The approved data is pushed to Shopify as draft products with the right options, to your warehouse or inventory system as SKUs, and out as purchase order lines and label files in the formats your factory and label supplier want.
- When the range changes, you edit the plan and re-run. The system shows what will be added, changed or retired in each place before it does anything.
Products stay as drafts until your team adds photos and copy, so nothing appears on the site early.
Season setup afterwards
The merchandiser finishes the range plan, runs the check, fixes the three problems it lists, and approves. The SKUs, barcodes and draft products are created from the one approved plan, identical in every system. When the buyer drops a colour a week later, the change shows up as a clear list of what will be retired, and it is applied everywhere at once.
The warehouse receives goods whose barcodes already exist in its system, so goods-in is scanning, not typing.
Special cases
Carry-over styles from last season keep their existing SKUs and barcodes, and only new colours get new ones. Multi-packs and gift sets need their own codes and a link to the components. If you sell through wholesale or marketplaces that need their own identifiers, those can be generated in the same run.
Is season setup like this for you?
- Setting up a new season takes days of typing.
- SKUs follow a pattern that only one person really knows.
- Barcodes are allocated from a spreadsheet of used numbers.
- You have found duplicate or missing barcodes at goods-in.
- Range changes have to be chased through several systems by hand.