Afound: marketplace guide

About this guide

This is a ChannelEngine guide on the Stockholm-based marketplace Afound. Here you can find information on how to request an Afound account, how to configure this marketplace on ChannelEngine, what the specific requirements are, and more.

Table of contents

Commercial information

How to request an account

Associated costs

Marketplace features

Settings and configuration

Marketplace-specific requirements and exceptions

• Setup
• Mappings
• Listed products

FAQs

Commercial information

How to request an account

Afound operates as part of Secret Sales, the UK-based online off-price marketplace. Afound focuses on curated deals for fashion and lifestyle products.

To sign up for a merchant account with Afound, follow the instructions in Secret Sales: marketplace guide. 

Associated costs

Commission fees must be negotiated with Afound's sales representative. 

Marketplace features

* A marketplace that supports sales channels allows merchants to list and sell products across multiple markets (e.g.: countries, regions, and states), all from the same connection.

Settings and configuration

Setting up each channel on ChannelEngine follows the same flow, though not every channel includes the steps listed below.

1. Go through the Setup.
2. Create a Product selection.
3. Complete the Categorization.
4. Set up the Mappings: content, offers, and carriers.
5. Configure the Pricing: rules and currency conversion.
6. Fill in the Stock settings.
7. Finish the Activation.
8. Check the Listed products overview.

Marketplace-specific requirements and exceptions

Setup

On ChannelEngine

Afound is a Mirakl-based marketplace, so you can connect it to ChannelEngine using a Mirakl Connect SSO account. For more information on this, check out the Mirakl-based channels: SSO authorization article.

Invoice uploads

To configure your invoice settings, go to Advanced settings. Then, select one option from the dropdown menu in the Enable invoice uploading field, which contains the following options:

• ChannelEngine invoices - when ChannelEngine receives a shipment, ChannelEngine automatically generates an invoice and attaches it to the shipment before exporting the shipment.
• Merchant invoices (optional) - when ChannelEngine receives a shipment, ChannelEngine exports the shipment – even if there is no invoice attached to it.
• Merchant invoices (required) - when ChannelEngine receives a shipment, ChannelEngine only exports the shipment if an invoice is attached to it. If not, you receive a notification.
• None - when ChannelEngine receives a shipment, ChannelEngine takes no action other than notifying you that no invoice is present.

If you select one of the Merchant invoices options, make sure to upload the invoice to ChannelEngine via the Merchant API or via the web interface. To learn more, check out the article ChannelEngine: upload merchant invoices.

Mappings

Content

Afound marks several attributes as optional, however, these are in fact required in order to create new content. Make sure to map as many attributes as possible.

All products (required)

• Article color brand - the manufacturer's original name of the color, displayed as text on the product detail page. E.g.: almondine, red rust, dove.
• Article standard color - Afound's standardized color name. You need to map your color names to values from this list.
• Article title EN - the name that appears on the website, on the color level. E.g.: Odessa coat black.
• Brand - the standardized name of the brand/manufacturer of the product. Note that this has to be mapped to values originating from Afound. If your brand is not available in this list, please contact Afound to have it added. ChannelEngine periodically imports new definitions, adding new options to the list.
• External variant ID - your internal variant identifier. Usually your Merchant product number on ChannelEngine. E.g.: ABC123-Yellow-Medium.
• Still life image URL - the main image of the product. Images must have at least 500x500 px, and a plain (white) background.

The following attributes are marked as Optional, but are in fact required to create content:

• GTIN13 - the 13-digit EAN or GTIN of the product.
• Material 1 - at least one material is required (2-5 are optional). E.g.: cotton.
• Material percentage [X] - required if the corresponding Material is mapped. This is a list of options for which values have to be mapped or selected. E.g.: 90%.
• Model ID - if you want to create variants based on color and size, the Model ID needs to be mapped. This is usually your parent SKU attribute.
• Product model name - the same as above, but only applicable if there is no ID to group products on. In this case, you can use this attribute to group products under one combined product name. E.g.: Odessa.

Offer

The only mandatory offer mappings are Price, which is your desired sale price, and General list price, which is the catalog price/MSRP.

The following offer attributes are common to some Mirakl-based marketplaces:

• ECO #1-5 amount - the amount due for the eco-contribution related to the product. E.g.: 2.50.
• ECO #1-5 EPR category code - the extended producer responsibility (EPR) code that applies to the product. For a list of category codes, check out the article Providing data to comply with circular economy regulations in Mirakl's help center (note that you need to be logged in to Mirakl to access this page). E.g.: DE-WEEE, FR-DEA, etc.
• ECO #1-5 producer ID - your producer ID, received upon registering with a packaging register, such as Germany's LUCID. The maximum number of characters is 255.

If pricing v2 is activated in your environment, you will see the following offer attributes, which are common to all Mirakl-based marketplaces:

• Allow promotion below min price - set it to ‘true’ to allow the promotion price to drop below your product's minimum price. To learn more, check out the article ChannelEngine: promotions.
• Strike price - the regular selling price. Use it in combination with the Price attribute to set up a discount/strikethrough pricing. To learn more, check out the 'Working with discounts' section of this article. 
• Additionally, the Fee groups attribute appears in Mappings, Fee group mappings, if pricing v2 is activated. Map the marketplace fee group ID of the product there.  

The following offer attributes are also common to all Mirakl-based marketplaces:

• Discount start date - the date from which the product's sale price is valid, if applicable. Input the date as a fixed value. The date format is YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS ZZ. All dates follow American month-day formatting, and all times follow 24-hour formatting in the UTC timezone. E.g.: 2026-10-25 15:30:00 +01 will start your discount on 25 October 2026 at 3:30 PM, one hour ahead of UTC time.
• Discount end date - the date until which the product's sale price is valid, if applicable. Input the date as a fixed value. The date format is YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS ZZ. All dates follow American month-day formatting, and all times follow 24-hour formatting in the UTC timezone. E.g.: 2026-10-30 23:59:59 +01 will end your discount on 30 October 2026 at 11:59 PM and 59 seconds, one hour ahead of UTC time.
• Discount price - the product's sale price, if applicable. This attribute must have a lower value than the Price attribute. This attribute only applies if you use pricing v1.
• Discount quantity threshold - the minimum quantity required for the discount rate to be available.
• Leadtime to shipment - the number of days before you ship the product. By default, this is set to two. You can create your own unique rules, if applicable. For more information on this, check out the article Lead time to ship in Mirakl's help center.
• Minimum quantity alert - map this attribute to receive a notification from Mirakl if your stock drops below the threshold defined.
• Offer state - the product's condition. Find your option from the dropdown menu by selecting the fixed value to apply to all.
• Product tax code - the taxation code applicable to the product.
• Logistic class - your optional shipping class. Make sure to map the shipping class using the marketplace’s codes and not with the labels that are visible in the partner portal's user interface. These codes vary per marketplace. If this marketplace makes use of logistic class codes, they can be found below.

There are also three Afound-specific offer mappings:

• Discount price - a third price field, for further reductions on the offered price. If no further reductions are active, this field should be left blank. Only applicable for specific sales.
• Discount ID - an ID field for specific discounts, if applicable.
• Warehouse ID - the ID of your warehouse locations, if applicable.

Working with discounts

• Do not leave the Discount end date attribute unmapped. If you want to set a permanent discount, use a date in the far future instead. Otherwise the offer is not exported, and errors are shown under the Validation and feedback tab.
• If your discounted price is not lower than the base price, it is not exported.
• If you do not want to set a bulk discount, leave the Discount quantity threshold attribute unmapped – otherwise the export is broken.
• If you do want to set a bulk discount, the Discount quantity threshold must be set to a value higher than 1. E.g.: a value of 2 indicates that two or more of the product must be purchased at the same time for the buyer to benefit from the discount.

Carrier

Carrier mapping is not required on Afound. However, you can map your carrier to a specific list of carriers maintained by Afound. This enables working track-and-trace links on the backend, which the buyer can access. If your default carrier is missing, please contact Afound.

Listed products

If you have problems with products not appearing on Mirakl-based marketplaces – especially if you are trying to create products, check the Listed products page for more information. Use the Channel status filter or the Validation and feedback tab to view all known errors for specific products.

If you see either of the below statuses, refer to the article ChannelEngine: why is my product listed as 'Product not found' in the inventory report?:

• Product not found in inventory report
• Product not in offer file

Products that ChannelEngine has failed to export are shown as Invalid, e.g.: products with an empty GTIN or that do not yet exist on the marketplace.

Alternatively, download the error report generated by Mirakl. To do so:

1. Log onto the Mirakl platform and go to Catalog, Product imports.
2. Identify the latest report and click the See details button.
3. Download the CSV file Non-integrated products report.

FAQs

Can I set up a shipping fee on ChannelEngine?

No, the shipping fee is a global Afound setting.

To configure the shipping fee:

1.  

   1. Go to the Shipping section on Afound's backend and choose Overridden price from the dropdown menu.

      

   2. Add the amount you want to charge for shipping in this specific store. Make sure to leave Additional price as zero, since this is not applicable on Afound. Click Save.

      

   3. Select Options under the Shipping section and add the threshold amount you want to apply on this store. Free shipping is applied to all orders with a higher order value than the chosen threshold.

      

   4. Optional: ticking the box Free shipping overrides all other shipping fee amounts you added to the store, and free shipping is applied to all orders of any value.

      

   5. Select Save to make the changes final.

How often does each task run on Mirakl-based marketplaces?

By default, Mirakl-based marketplaces follow the schedule below:

Can I map attributes on ChannelEngine and on the Mirakl platform?
No. Mapping attributes on the Mirakl marketplace platform interferes with ChannelEngine's content export. Therefore, it is recommended to categorize and map content only on ChannelEngine.

Why am I not receiving feedback on my content and/or offer exports?
Chances are that you are receiving the feedback. However, different types of error reports can take a couple of hours or several days to be generated:

• Offer feedback
  • Error reports are mostly generated automatically and are imported quickly.
• Content feedback
  • Transformation error report - this is automatically generated, and usually imported within a maximum of one day.
  • Conventional error report - this requires a manual review by the Mirakl-based marketplace, and not all do so. It can take several days for this report to be imported.

Note that the previous feedback report is not removed from ChannelEngine until both the latest transformation and the conventional reports have been fully processed by ChannelEngine. If there are no errors to report, no new reports are generated.