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 channel on ChannelEngine, what the specific requirements are, and more.

Table of contents

Commercial information

How to request an account

Associated costs

Channel features

Settings and configuration

Channel-specific requirements and exceptions

• Setup
• Categorization
• Mappings
• Listed products

FAQs

Commercial information

Founded	June 2018
Headquarters	Stockholm, Sweden
Area served (orders)	Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden
Revenue	USD 67.7 million (2020)
Number of monthly visitors	circa 1 million (2021)
Website	Afound
Setup cost	none
Commission	category-based percentage (circa 20%)
Other costs	none
Payment	every Monday, for all orders made 21-27 days earlier
Product categories	fashion (prêt-à-porter, shoes, accessories, sport), home, interior, beauty, and more
Input language	English (with localized titles, descriptions, etc.)
Input currency	EUR, DKK (Denmark), SEK (Sweden)
Content creation	yes
Profile on ChannelEngine	Afound

How to request an account

Afound is both a closed, online marketplace and a chain of physical stores. It offers "discounts on products from all H&M Group brands together with a wide mix of external fashion, sports, interior and beauty brands."

To sign up for a merchant account with Afound, read the content of their Partner up page (in Dutch, German, or Swedish) and then contact their onboarding team via email.

The following requirements apply:

• You must have a registration at the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce.
• You should be able to sell collections from the previous or current season.
• You should be able to provide after-sales customer support in English.
• You should be able to ship products within five business days.

Associated costs

Afound does not charge a registration fee, but it does charge a category-based commission on every sale (circa 20%).

Channel features

Supported	Not supported
Product offers (EAN matching)	Returns (channel)
Product content	Marketplace fulfillment service
Orders	Repricing
Cancelations (merchant)	Automatic relationships
Returns/refunds (merchant)	HTML formatting
Shipments	Sales channels
Product variations (sizes/colors)
Carrier mapping

Settings and configuration

Setting up each channel on ChannelEngine follows the same flow, once you add the channel:

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. Finish the Activation.
7. Check the Listed products overview.

Channel-specific requirements and exceptions

Setup

On ChannelEngine

Afound is a Mirakl-based channel, 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.

You can leave the Mirakl seller name field empty, as Afound does not support repricing.

Invoice uploads

To configure your invoice settings, click Advanced settings. You can then click the dropdown menu Enable invoice uploading, which contains the following options:

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

If you select one of the Merchant invoices options, make sure to enable the invoice upload to ChannelEngine via the Merchant API. For that, call the POST /v2/orders/{merchantOrderNo}/invoice endpoint. Note that only invoices in PDF are supported.

Invalid XML characters

To remove invalid XML characters from your product data, click Advanced settings and enable the Check and filter invalid XML characters setting. ChannelEngine checks product data submitted in the XML format for invalid characters (e.g.: Ã, ¢, â, etc.). Once identified, invalid characters are removed or converted to a valid equivalent.

Categorization

Categorization is mandatory if you want to create or update existing product information on Afound. Both categorizations and mappings only result in updates if the content connection is enabled, and the relevant credentials have been entered (see the Setup section). Both the categorization and mappings use attribute names in English.

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, particularly in France and Germany:

• 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.

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

• 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.
• Minimum quantity alert - map this attribute to receive a notification from ChannelEngine 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 it using the marketplace’s codes, not the labels visible in the front-end. These codes vary per marketplace. Below you can find the codes used by this marketplace:

Code	Label	Description
SP	Standard Parcel	Parcel Delivery 1-20kg

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 allows for working track-and-trace links in the back-end, as well as for the buyer. 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.

You can either filter on Channel status (select Invalid to show all products that ChannelEngine has not exported, such as products with an empty GTIN or that currently do not exist on the marketplace) or use the Validation and feedback tab to see all known errors for specific products.

For detailed status reports, go to the Mirakl back-end. Their reports contain specific errors if a product or product offer cannot be created. To find them, go to My inventory, Import from file, Track offer imports/Track product imports. By hovering over the 'i' under the Status section, you can see how many products in the file were processed correctly and how many had errors, etc.

If there are errors, the last column shows a downloadable file in which they are listed. The same goes for the product file import, but this can contain multiple files because processing goes through several systems. There is also a manual check of your submitted content, which, once approved, goes to staging as well. Note that you need to map as much as possible to prevent products from not being created.

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 in Afound's back-end 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 channels?

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

Task	Frequency
Export product data to channel	every 60 minutes
Export product offers to channel	every 15 minutes
Import product offers from channel	every 15 minutes
Import orders from channel	every 15 minutes
Export order shipments to channel	every 15 minutes
Export returns to channel	every 30 minutes