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Products Overview

Item​

In Endless, items are the primitive. Every commerce operation references them:

  • A purchase order is a collection of items + quantities + prices + delivery terms.
  • Inventory is items + locations + availability.
  • EDI is items + trading partner mappings + compliance data.
  • Fulfillment is items + routing + packaging specs.
  • Pricing is items + channels + customer tiers.

The item is not just product data. It’s the semantic core of commerce: what it is (attributes, descriptions, images), where it comes from (suppliers, manufacturers, lead times), where it goes (channels, retailers, pricing), how it moves (packaging, shipping, compliance), and what happened to it (transactions, inventory events, returns).

The product/item catalog is the core foundation of Endless, managing all product information that flows through the system. It serves as the absolute source of truth for product data.

The goal of the Product catalog is to allow you to answer any question you are asked about your products. If you are asked a question that you can’t answer, it’s an opportunity to enrich your product data. That question is now answerable for all future queries. A “question” can also take the form of an API call from (or to) an external system like Amazon.

note

Endless Commerce should be the absolute source of truth for your product data. Many systems and stakeholders will need a copy of your product data (your shopping cart, your 3PL, your accounting system, and so on).

The core object of the catalog is a product. Products are at the core of basically every team, system, process, and action of a CPG business. The atomic unit for a product is a SKU. The SKU should be a unique identifier within a given company. This is a system requirement.

Brands​

Almost all products belong to a brand. Brands are the labels that go on the box and the way that you talk about your business. Some companies operate multiple brands, or act as a retailer for multiple brands; some companies only operate a single brand.

Attributes​

You can use product attributes to define and organize your product catalog. A well-structured attribute library allows you to quickly filter your catalog to support whatever the task of the day is.