Stock Keeping Unit

From PlantX.net

A SKU, or Stock Keeping Unit, is an number created by a merchant to track items for sale in their inventory. It is also commonly referred to as a product code. Most software programs use a SKU because they are unable to handle long names like botanical names. Merchants are required to devise clever coding systems in order to adapt plant names and attributes into 30 characters or less.

Long, long ago (that is over 20 years ago) computer storage was at a premium and sending data from one computer to another over a modem was very slow and expensive. This made storing full names out of the question. Product names had to be shortend into codes so they could be stored and transmitted efficiently. Today, you can fit an entire library on the average home computer and with new broadband connections (cable and DSL) you can download data hundreds of times faster. It is no long necessary to be so cryptic and use obscure codes to track your inventory.

You no longer have to get creative and come up with clever codes that baffle your staff or customers (although botanical names are no picnic either.) Your staff knows plants and your customers want to buy plants, not obscure SKU codes. PlantX.net uses the full botanical name, common name and over fifty plant attributes to help your customers find the plants they need.

Although PlantX.net does not need SKU numbers, it still carries a field for them to help make the transition from older systems that depend on them.

See Wikipedia pages for the accepted definition of SKU.