Developing SKUs

What to data to include?

[flyingpylon]

I'm in the process of developing a small online store where I will be selling products from different manufacturers. I have just started to acquire some inventory and I'm curious about what others do to develop SKUs for their various offerings.

Do you just create some numbers in sequence (1001, 1002, etc.) or do you find it helpful to include other codes in the SKU for things such as manufacturer, product type, etc.?

Any advice is appreciated!

[Easy_Coder]

Try to just let your sku be a sku. I've seen many companies walk themselves into a corner by baking other rules into a sku... rules that are really item attributes; like a manufacturer code or a condition type.

[shri]

Stick with UPCs / EAN / ISBN type codes as they are unique across items and also might allow you to automate transactions with your suppliers (larger distributors tend to work with one of these codes).

Would highly recommend not developing your own code (we had done this .. and it turned into a nightmare situation converting back and forth between what our distributor used).