Supplier style code changes: what to expect and what to do

What is not affected

These all match on the individual SKU, so they carry on working normally:

• Stock levels
• Cost prices and RRP on individual items
• Item descriptions
• Barcodes
• Ordering from the supplier — purchase orders use the reorder number
• Tills, labels, product search
• Importing new products from SIM — matching is on SKU or barcode, never style code

Nothing is deleted or deactivated, and existing products won't reappear as "new" in SIM.

1. Duplicate matrices — not duplicate SKUs

If a retailer already has the product and a new size or colour then comes through under a new style code, POS creates a second matrix (variant parent). The existing sizes stay attached to the old one; the new size goes into the new one.

No SKU is duplicated. Each individual size still exists exactly once, with its own stock, cost and barcode. It's the variant parent above them that has been duplicated.

The visible result: two matrices in POS, and two product pages online for what is really one product.

2. Style-level season and RRP stop updating

Season and RRP at matrix level are matched on style code, so the old matrix stops receiving them. Individual items keep updating — it's only the style header that freeze. This doesn't affect what customers are charged — pricing is taken from the individual items, which carry on updating as normal — but the parent record can end up showing an out-of-date season or RRP, which looks odd to retailers.

Low impact in practice, as old seasons drop off the radar anyway. Two things worth knowing:

• The item-level season update only fills in a season that is blank — it never changes one that's already set. So the matrix route is the only way a season gets corrected after import. "It'll sort itself out next time" isn't true.
• The silent version of this: if the retailer already has the complete matrix and no new size ever arrives, no second matrix is created — so there is no symptom at all. It's the same problem as above, just without the duplicate product that would have flagged it. Neither the retailer nor support can spot this from inside POS.

3. Colour names form part of the style code for this supplier

This supplier doesn't give us a colour code, so we build the style code from their style code plus the colour name. We also use colour to group products into colourways.

Support impact: a colour rename causes exactly the same problem as a style code change. If a retailer reports a duplicate product and the supplier insists they haven't changed any style codes, they may both be telling the truth.

4. Website knock-ons beyond the duplicate page

• The old product page stays live and competes with the new one until someone removes it
• The links between colourways on a product page may stop working
• The page may show fewer alternate images — it pulls extra images from the other sizes and colours in the same style, and a split style has fewer to draw on
• To Google Shopping, Amazon and eBay the new page is a brand new product — it loses its history, reviews and search ranking

5. Manual data corrections can be lost

If anyone has manually corrected a product's name, description, colour, size or category in SIM, that correction is protected by a flag attached to the style. When the style changes, the protection resets, and on a later feed run the supplier's raw data overwrites the correction.

This is delayed and invisible — it doesn't happen on the import that causes it, but on a later one.

6. Things that fail loudly

• If a new style code clashes with an existing item code, barcode or matrix code in POS, the whole matrix fails to import — the style and every size in it. The retailer sees an import error.
• If the style code plus colour comes to more than 25 characters, the item is rejected from the feed entirely.

What the retailer needs to do

When a duplicate matrix appears: move the existing sizes into the new matrix — the one carrying the new style code.

This direction is critical. The instinctive fix is to drag the new size back into the old, familiar matrix so everything looks tidy. That produces a matrix that looks correct but is permanently cut off from SIM updates — worse than leaving it split, because it looks fixed.

Alternative, if the old matrix holds most of the sizes: change the old matrix's code to the new style code, then delete the duplicate.

Then:

• Remove or deactivate the duplicate product page on the website
• Check the colourways are still linked
• Check the images on the surviving page

What we should do

• Ask the supplier for the old-to-new style code mapping. They're the only ones who can produce it — nothing in our systems records a style's previous code. Our responsibility is to ask that it happens, not to work it out ourselves. If they send it, we pass it on to our retailers so they can see which of their products are affected.
• Take a copy of the supplier's data in SIM before the first import in the new format. Useful to have if we do need to compare before and after — and it can only be taken beforehand.

Where responsibility sits

Tidying the matrices, merging duplicate product pages and checking colourway links is retailer housekeeping — the same as any other data maintenance in their own system. Our job is to pass on what the supplier tells us has changed, not to work out the impact retailer by retailer or carry out the clean-up.

We have helped individual retailers with this kind of clean-up before and may well do so again where someone is genuinely stuck. That's a case-by-case judgement, though, and shouldn't be built into the standard process or offered up front as part of the change.