💡In this article you will learn about:
How Style Arcade captures launch/published dates across
different channels in order to facilitate accurate sell-through analysis.
The different Supported Activation Date Sources.
✅ Supported Activation Date Sources
Date of First Sale
Style Arcade will automatically use the Date of First Sale as an launch/published date source
For channels with pre-orders or advance wholesale orders, providing a reliable alternative is available, this behaviour can be disabled
What you can customise:
You can ignore sales with $0 or specifically sales orders with Shopify tags e.g. influencer, PR
Criteria can be based on revenue amount, specific locations, order tags etc. - anything you can see in the source file (e.g. shopify orders) can be used
You cannot prioritise this over other sources of activation dates
Online Published Date
Style Arcade can use the Published Date from an e-commerce platform
Shopify natively supports this, and Style Arcade will capture the earliest value (as some products are taken down and re-published)
Magento2 must be customised to support this
For BigCommerce this can be inferred by capturing the earliest date that the product was set to "available"
Impressions (Google Analytics)
Date of first impression can be used as the activation date
This requires that GA is set up correctly (most retailers have problems with this)
Date of Stock Arrival
This is typically used to track activation across a retail store network
The obvious downside is that there may be a delay between when the stock is delivered and when it is put on the floor, but providing this happens within the same week it will be sufficiently accurate
This is not advisable to use for online activation unless the online store has a dedicated warehouse set up in the ERP
What you can customise:
You can decide to not activate on specific locations
Flat File
A flat file that can identify both the product and launch date can be used as a source of activation date
This is typical in push-style integrations with ERPs providing that the launch date is tracked in the ERP
It's also possible to provide a manual file (CSV, Excel or Gsheet)
📌 Rules
Option 1: Default
For each channel, Style Arcade will take the earliest of the following:
- Activation Date supplied by eCommerce or flat file
- Date of first sale
- Date of first impression (if GA is connected)
- Date of first stock arrival (if enabled)If none of the above is present, it will mark the product as Not Yet Launched
Option 2: Prioritise supplied activation date
For each channel, Style Arcade will use the following if present:
- Activation Date supplied by eCommerce or flat fileIf the above is NOT present, Style Arcade will take the earliest of the following:
- Date of first sale
- Date of first impression (if GA is connected)
- Date of first stock arrival (if enabled)If none of the above is present, it will mark the product as Not Yet Launched
Option 3: Strict activation
For each channel, Style Arcade will use the following if present:
Activation Date supplied by e-commerce or flat file
If none of the above is present, it will mark the product as Not Yet Launched
👀 Example configurations
Online Channel
Use published date if it’s available
Use date of first sale, only if published date is not available
Online Channel
Use published date or date of first sale, whichever is earliest
Don’t activate on $0 sales or sales tagged with “influencer”
Online Channel
Use published date for activation date
Ignore everything else (only use published date)
Retail Channel
Use date of first stock or date of first sale, whichever is earliest
Don’t use date of first stock in replenishment warehouse
When there is a combined channel such as Total Business, it will take the earliest launch dates against the product among all channels.
NOTES:
Style Arcade can take an activation date from a flat file or eCommerce platform and apply it to any channel - for example, some retailers may wish to see their online launch date when analysing wholesale sales
Style Arcade typically cannot take a date of first sale, impression or stock arrival in one channel and apply it to another (however there are exceptions)
Got any questions? Feel free to reach out to our in-app chat for assistance! 🤩