Both codes sit on the same paperwork and answer different questions. The EAN tells the whole world "this is exactly this product, in this size and this color". The SKU tells your company, and only yours, what you decided to call it.
What an EAN is
An EAN-13 is a 13-digit number issued through GS1: the manufacturer buys a company prefix and assigns a number to every variant it puts on the market. It is the number printed as a barcode on the swing tag, for example 8012345678903. Anyone selling that garment, from a single shop to a marketplace, reads the same digits. It never changes for the life of the product.
What an SKU is
An SKU (stock keeping unit) is a free-format internal code. A supplier might use CAM-OX-118-WHT, and the retailer that buys it may recode the same garment as OX118. There is no central register and no guarantee of uniqueness outside the company that invented it. Some suppliers assign the SKU at style-plus-color level and put the size in a separate column, so one code covers five or six different variants.
| EAN | SKU | |
|---|---|---|
| Assigned by | Manufacturer, through GS1 | Each company, free format |
| Scope | Globally unique | Internal only |
| Granularity | Always one exact variant | Style, style+color, or variant |
| Stability | Fixed for life | Can change season to season |
| Where you see it | Barcode on the label | Orders, price lists, back office |
One style, many EANs
A shirt in 3 colors and 5 sizes is 15 variants, so 15 distinct EANs. How many SKUs there are depends on the convention: 15, or 3 if the supplier codes only style and color. This is where stock errors start. When two documents from the same shipment use SKUs built on different logic, matching them by hand turns into detective work.
Which one to use when
At the till, during goods-in, and on marketplaces the EAN wins: the scanner reads the barcode and identifies the variant with no ambiguity. In reorders and in conversation with the supplier you speak in SKUs, because that is the language of their price lists. Your product records need both, attached to the same variant, so every document finds its way.
How Agilo handles it
Agilo reads supplier documents in PDF, including scans, as well as CSV and Excel, and uses AI to pull out size and color variants with their EANs and prices whatever coding convention the supplier used. Documents from the same shipment are reconciled into one load, and closing that load updates inventory with the correct EANs, ready to sync to Shopify and About You.