💡In this article, you will learn about:
How Style Arcade captures launch/published dates across
different channels to facilitate accurate sell-through analysis.
The different Supported Activation Date Sources.
What is the launch date?
The date that the product goes live.
For each channel, brands have the option to choose at least one of the following as the launch date logic:
Date of first sale
Date of first in stock
Shopify online published date: initial or the latest
Custom field
If a product has none of the above triggers, it is assumed as Not Yet Launched.
How is the launch date configured on Style Arcade?
Launch dates are configurable at the channel level
Each channel can have multiple launch date sources at a time
In combined channels such as the Total Business channel, the earliest launch date among all the sources will be used.
For example: Product A launch dates are calculated as below by channel:
Channel | Channel Type | Launch Logic | Launch Date |
Total Business | Combined Channel, Sourcing from Online & Retail. | Use the earliest date between the Online published date or the Date of first sale | 2025-10-01 |
Online | Single | Online published date | 2025-10-01 |
Retail | Single | Date of first sale | 2025-10-02 |
Supported Launch Logic
Supported Sources | How it works | What you can customise | Note |
Date of First Sale | Style Arcade will use the date of the first sale transacted at a product level
For channels with pre-orders or advance wholesale orders, providing a reliable alternative is available, this behaviour can be disabled | You can set a criterion to not trigger a date of first sale based on:
| Style Arcade cannot prioritise this over other sources of activation dates.
E.g. If you are using both Online published date & Date of first sale as the sources of the launch logic. Date of first sale will always be the 2nd priority. |
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 or the latest value (as some products are taken down and re-published)
Magento 2 must be customised to support this
BigCommerce can be inferred by capturing the earliest date that the product was set to "available" | When using Shopify's online published date, the customers will have to choose a "fallback" launch logic between:
This is because when a product is unpublished in Shopify, we lose the visibility of the published date. |
Date of first stock arrival | This is typically used to track launch date 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 for sale, 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. | You can decide to not activate on specific locations
e.g. Don't trigger a launch date for "Support Centre" or "Distribution Centre". |
|
Custom field | Custom fields are any types of data sources that are provided by the customers to Style Arcade.
Support custom fields:
| You can use a custom field as the 1st priority for launch date, and choose another logic as a fallback just in case it isn't available. |
|
FAQ
What launch date would the app show when I filter by a specific store in the channel?
What launch date would the app show when I filter by a specific store in the channel?
When you apply a store filter, Style Arcade uses the launch logic at the store level—so it only considers the selected store's data to determine the product's launch status.
If you don’t use a store filter (i.e. you're looking at the channel level), Style Arcade will use the earliest launch date across all stores in the channel for that product.
Example:
Let’s say this channel is using the date of first sale as the launch date logic.
Here's what happens:
Store 1 has made its first sale, so its launch date is set to 2025-05-25.
Stores 2, 3, and 4 haven’t sold any units yet, so they are marked as Not yet launched.
Now:
If you filter to Store 1, the product will show as launched.
If you filter to Store 2, the product will show as not yet launched.
If you look at the channel level, the app uses the earliest launch date (Store 1’s 2025-05-25).
Got any questions? Feel free to reach out to our in-app chat for assistance! 🤩