This article will explain how to load your company's underlying data set for configuration of custom Merchandising Hierarchy fields and their contained drop-down values.
Retailers need to join retail data to the product data provided by their suppliers in order to complete the required data set needed for SKU generation in their own systems. Merchandising Hierarchy is normally the most important and complex area of this data.
📔 What is Merchandising Hierarchy?
Typically the Merchandising Hierarchy is the primary mechanism used by a retailer to group products together, and drives window displays in stores, filters on websites, and management reporting related to sales, inventory, and profitability.
This logic is unique to each retailer and demands custom field names and drop-down values.
Every Merchandising Hierarchy has dependencies between each 'level' or "tier' eg:
Paper / Coloured Paper / Red
Where value Red is only contained within Coloured Paper, it does not exist in White Paper for example.
Example of typical Merchandising Hierarchy structure could be:
- Level 1: Department
- Level 2: Class
- Level 3: Sub-Class
Examples of a typical jewellery Merchandising Hierarchy string (contained values) could be:
- Level 1: Bridal
- Level 2: Engagement Ring Sets
- Level 3: Solitaires
Step 1: Download the template here
Step 2: Complete your Merchandising Hierarchy as per your commercial and system requirements:
Data Input Guidance:
| Field value | Alphanumeric inc Special Characters |
| Maximum characters | MH Label - 200 Code - 25 Parent - 500 |
| Maximum rows | 5000 |
📔 Special Characters:
Special characters are defined as all non-alphanumeric characters. For avoidance of doubt, the following special characters are accepted if Type = "alphanumeric inc SC" above:
- Accepted SC for MH Label - space!"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~
- Accepted SC for MH Code - space!"#$%&'()*+-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~
Example file:
Step 3: Deliver your payload to the Merchandising Hierarchy API
Endpoint URL:
https://enterprise.atelier.technology/api/FoundationalData/merchandising-hierarchy
For example requests and to test this end-point here is the direct Swagger link: Import MH Data
Step 4: You can now see your company's Merchandising hierarchy populated in Atelier on:
- Linesheet Specification
- Linesheet Filters
- Integrations / Retail Data Mapping
⚠️ Warning for Uniqueness:
Code should be unique value for all levels.