What are Products and Components?
Products
Products refer to finished goods that are sold to consumers.
Examples:
T-shirt
Jacket
Sneakers
Bedding
Products represent what ultimately reaches the end customer.
Components
Components, on the other hand, are the individual parts and materials required to assemble finished goods.
Examples:
Fabric
Ribbing
Lining
Buttons or zippers
Together, components make up the full product.
How are Products and Components structured?
Both Products and Components are organized using a hierarchy:
Style → Variant → SKU
Style: The core product (e.g., “Basic Cotton T-Shirt”).
Variant: Usually represents color variation (e.g., “Blue”, “Red”).
SKU: Represents the sellable unit, size (e.g., “Blue – Size M”).
Important: A Variant must always belong to a Style, while an SKU must always belong to a Variant.
This structure allows you to:
Manage product data more accurately, especially when attributes differ between variants (e.g., colorways) or SKUs (e.g., sizes).
Prepare for scalable tracing and DPP workflows
Where can I find Products and Components?
Products and Components are managed in separate areas of the platform. You can access them from the left navigation under Products:
My Styles: Finished goods (Products)
My Components: Materials and parts
This separation reflects how products are built and traced in real supply chains.
Finished goods are distinct from the materials used to create them.
Why do I need to create Products and Components?
Creating Products and Components is required for tracing and other advanced workflows.
Creating Products and Components is essential when using Retraced’s Order Tracing feature.
Order Tracing
Tracing helps you and your partners collaborate across the supply chain transactions and enables you to trace finished goods back to their raw material origins.
To trace an order successfully:
Products must be created before tracing can begin.
You first need Components in place to represent the materials and parts used in production
Those Components are then linked to Products (Styles, Variants, SKUs) via orders
This allows supply chain relationships to be mapped and traced through orders
Beyond tracing, Products and Components also optionally interact with other modules, such as:
Product certificates
Certificates can be linked at:
Style level
Variant level
SKU level
Digital Product Passport (DPP)
Connecting products to
Product Mapping for DPP use cases
These connections help ensure that compliance documentation and sustainability claims remain consistent across product levels.