Guide
Plain-language notes for Place et Marque terms that are easy to trip over. In the catalog, a ? next to a term opens a short definition.
Pack
A larger sellable unit that can contain pieces or other packs.
A pack is how you sell something in bulk—for example a spool of wire or a carton of parts. A pack can link to a piece (or to another pack in a chain) so inventory and break fees stay consistent when someone buys less than a full pack.
Piece
The smaller sellable unit—often cut or broken out of a pack.
A piece is the unit shoppers buy when they want less than a full pack—for example feet of cable cut from a spool. A product can be piece-only, or a piece can sit under one or more packs through pack links.
UOM
Unit of measure—how quantity is counted.
UOM is short for unit of measure: foot, spool, each, and so on. Place et Marque has shared global units plus units a vendor defines for their own catalog. Aliases (ft, foot, ') count as the same name when looking for duplicates.
Broken pack
The remainder after a pack is opened to sell a smaller amount.
If a 500-foot spool is opened to sell 20 feet, the leftover 480 feet is a broken pack. Piece availability can be derived from whole packs plus these remainders instead of tracking a separate piece pile.
Break fee
An extra charge for opening a pack to sell a smaller amount.
A break fee is optional. It covers the cost of opening a pack (or a nested pack in a chain) so a shopper can buy less than a full unit. You can set a product default and override it on a specific pack-to-piece link.
Supervendor
The one vendor allowed to edit shared catalog structure.
Exactly one vendor—currently austenstrine.dev—is the supervendor. That membership can create and change global categories and global units. Other vendors still tag products and can request new categories.
Pack / piece key
A stable name for a pack or piece inside a product, used when importing.
When a CSV adds or updates catalog rows, packs and pieces are matched by SKU plus offering_key (for example pack or piece). That lets you rename a SKU without losing the row, and it is how nested pack/piece links point at each other.