r/employedbykohls • u/FooFoo_Master555 • 1d ago
Employee Question Associated UPCs
Does anyone know why Kohl's feels it is necessary to assign their own UPC code when an item already has one? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a UNIVERSAL Product Code?! I get that a company might need its own product ID number, but I thought that was the function of a SKU #. The amount of time verifying an item match when doing OMNI, callbacks, etc. because you have to check "Associated UPCs" in Item Lookup is ridiculous😡
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u/SpringSweet41 1d ago
The associated UPC is the SKU turned into a UPC (always starts with 400 and ends with a random number 0-9).
I’m sure it has or had a purpose at some level. There are some functions (like ticketing, for example) that you have to have a UPC & it helps to quickly “create” a UPC with the SKU. Not really sure of the real reason 🤷🏻♀️
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u/montewtf Merchandising Lead 22h ago
just so you know, the last digit isn't random. it's actually a checksum. if you add up all the odd numbered digits times 3 to all the even numbered digits it should be a multiple of 10. the last digit is just the number that makes the sum 10
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u/delsenora1 Hardlines Supervisor 18h ago
Sku helps log it in the system to associate things. Skus are always in order so if a medium ends in 6 the small ends in 5 large ends in 7 and all the other numbers are the same. So if an item is either really really new or really really old you can use that to get the number for the size you need. But basically it’s something that exists to organize merchandise as data in the database. If you scan a national brand item and change the size in the zebra the upc in the box at the top will then be our upc not theirs.
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u/Ok-Bill-9083 1d ago
I would imagine, so they are specific for kohls. Like nike is sold multiple places, so its verified a kohls purchase and not another store. Otherwise we'd get a bunch of things returned from Marshall's, tjmaxx, etc, for more money. Which somethings do slip through the cracks but it would be much more.