Product Definition Specification
Shipwire offers specific guidelines, and recommendations, on how your goods should be described (in your account online) before being sent to a Shipwire warehouse. Following these guidelines will help ensure that you get the most value out of the Shipwire service, and will prevent unnecessary errors, delays and/or damaged product.
If after reviewing this information, you have any additional questions, please contact our friendly Customer Care team.
Define
Before you can send product to Shipwire, you need to describe what you will be sending (under Manage Products in your Shipwire account). This is where you can fully describe your product catalog. One big difference you will notice from the product catalog information you may have in your shopping cart is that Shipwire’s required fields are oriented to knowing enough about your product that we can reliably pack & ship your orders. Below is a quick description of the key fields applicable to most Shipwire product types, as well as general guidelines:
- SKU: Is the unique identifier for your product. SKUs must not be longer than 15 characters and can only include numbers, letters and dashes (no spaces, punctuation or other special characters).
- Description: Helps you tell us more about your product. Where possible, add the level of the detail that might help distinguish this product from a different product (e.g. color, size, packaging description)
- Fragile/Perishable/Dangerous: If you believe your product is likely to require special handling, please let us know.
- Dimensions/Weights: Your product’s dimensions and weights will ensure that you get accurate shipping rates, and quotes. Failure to enter accurate weights can result in additional shipping charges.
- Cost/Retail: These fields are used for insurance and customs purposes. It is your responsibility to make sure you have accurate $ U.S. values in these fields.
- Customs Specific (Made In/HTS): When your outbound orders are shipped over international borders, Shipwire needs to prepare appropriate documentation for customs. These specific product level fields are part of the information requirements.
- SKU Types: Shipwire natively supports several different types of SKUs (Pick & Pack, Lick & Stick, Inserts, Cases). Learn the basics about Shipwire SKU types. Case type SKUs are incredibly useful. Please use these liberally to describe any SKU the warehouse may handle that contains a lower level SKU (e.g. a case of 12 pencils). In some instances, your lowest level order taking unit may look to our warehouse like it is a Case type SKU (e.g. a bag of 6 widgets). To prevent any possible for confusion, we strongly advise that you fully define your product line’s hierarchy, down to the lowest level unit – even if you never have any intension of selling that SKU. In the example above, you would define one lower level unit for the contents within the bag, and then you would define the bag of 6 widgets as a case (which can itself be treated as either as either a Pick & Pack or Lick & Stick unit from an order processing standpoint). When sending in new inventory, or outbound orders, note that you never have to reference this new lowest level unit: its presence simply ensures that our systems have the most complete understanding of how your product is packaged.