Secret Sales Integration – Feature & Process Guide
Secret Sales Group is a flash-sale marketplace running five UK/EU brand sites on a single shared connection: Secret Sales owns the customer relationship, the brand site and the payment, while we list, price, fulfil and refund. Physical returns are handled by ZigZag and customer-facing delivery tracking by Parcel Perform, so neither needs any work on our side. There are no live push notifications from Secret Sales for orders, returns or stock — everything is picked up on a regular polling schedule instead.
Secret Sales does not currently appear on Pentagon Connect's list of active marketplaces, and this integration is understood to update an existing setup rather than being built from a blank slate. Treat this guide as describing what the integration is designed to support, not as confirmation that every part of it is live today.
Quick Reference
Product Management
| Capability | Supported | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Create new products | Yes | Submitted as a batch and picked up by a scheduled job; no manual per-product action needed |
| Update product content (title, description, images, attributes) | Yes | Runs through the same batch process as creation |
| Update price | Yes | Always sent together with stock — see Pricing & Stock Sync |
| Update stock/quantity | Yes | Always sent together with price — see Pricing & Stock Sync |
| Lock price from being overwritten | No | Price-protection settings are not honoured on this integration |
| Lock stock from being overwritten | No | Stock-protection settings are not honoured on this integration |
| Product variants (colour/size groups) | Yes | Colour and size are the two variant-driving attributes |
| Multiple product images | Yes | One main image plus up to five additional images; anything beyond that is ignored |
| Pause/deactivate a listing | Not documented in current source material | No explicit deactivation mechanism is described in the specs reviewed |
Pricing & Stock
| Capability | Supported | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| RRP / strike-through pricing | Yes | When RRP is set higher than the selling price, the higher figure is shown as the "was" price |
| Independent price-only or stock-only updates | No | Price and stock are modelled as one combined update; changing either sends both |
| Price/stock protection flags respected | No | "Protect price", "protect quantity" and "protect whole item" are not honoured here, unlike most other marketplaces |
Orders & Fulfilment
| Capability | Supported | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic order import | Yes | Orders are picked up on a regular polling schedule, not pushed to us |
| Order acceptance / acknowledgement | Yes | A distinct step required before an order can be shipped — see Accepting orders |
| Ship orders (tracking + mark shipped) | Yes | |
| Partial shipment | Partial | An order can be split across shipments, but only at the full-line level; a line can't later move to a different shipment |
| Carrier & tracking number | Yes | See Carriers Supported below |
Refunds, Returns, Cancellations & Claims
| Capability | Supported | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Order cancellation | Yes | Only once an order has been accepted and is ready for shipping |
| Reject | Yes | A distinct action from cancel/refund, used before an order is accepted |
| Full refund | Yes | Once the relevant line has shipped |
| Partial refund (by quantity) | Yes | |
| Returns | Yes | Physical handling managed by ZigZag; we refund once the return is inspected |
| Claims / incidents | Not documented in current source material | No equivalent to La Redoute's claims/incident mechanism appears in the specs reviewed |
Product Management
Creating products
New products are submitted as a batch and picked up by a scheduled job — there's no manual per-product action needed. Required information per product includes size, category, brand, our own SKU, gender, colour, a variant grouping, the sales channel/locale, and a main image; a product missing any of these is not sent. Beyond that, a fairly rich set of descriptive content can be attached — product name, description, warranty, care instructions, measurements and composition — each in the appropriate language for the market it's listed on, plus details like country of origin, along with up to five additional images alongside the main one.
Every product is checked against Secret Sales' own category, brand, colour, size and gender lists before being sent; a value that doesn't match a known option blocks the product rather than being sent through invalid. Which attributes are required varies slightly by category — brand and size are required everywhere, but colour, gender and material each have specific categories where they don't apply or are optional (for example, colour isn't required for Electricals or Homeware, and material isn't required for Beauty & Grooming or Technology).
Products are listed across five UK/EU brand sites depending on which locale the content is provided for, with UK-market content used as the fallback where another language isn't supplied.
Updating products
Product content updates run through the same batch process as creation, picked up by the same scheduled job. Price and stock are handled separately through the pricing/stock sync process described below — they aren't part of a content update.
Deactivating / removing products
Not documented in current source material. No explicit "pause", "deactivate" or "close" action for a live listing is described in the specs reviewed.
Pricing & Stock Sync
Price and stock are modelled as a single combined update rather than two separate flows — updating either one always pushes both together, for every product with a pending price or stock change. This means price-only or stock-only updates aren't possible on this integration, which is worth flagging to anyone used to marketplaces where the two are independent.
Pricing follows a strike-through model: when our RRP is set higher than our selling price, the RRP is sent as the "was" price and the selling price as the discounted price; otherwise the selling price is sent with no discount shown. Stock quantity is aggregated across our locations before being sent.
Price and stock protection settings are not honoured for this integration — a change always goes through in full regardless of any "protect price", "protect quantity" or "protect whole item" flag. This is a deliberate departure from how those protections behave on most other marketplace connectors, so it's worth calling out proactively if a seller asks why a protected price or stock level changed anyway.
Order Management
Getting orders
Orders are picked up automatically on a polling schedule intended to run roughly every minute once live — there are no live push notifications on this integration for orders or anything else, so everything is picked up on the next scheduled check rather than in real time. A newly placed order first appears awaiting our acknowledgement.
Accepting orders
Before an order can be shipped, it must be acknowledged — this is a distinct step, separate from shipping. Acceptance confirms which lines we can actually fulfil, and only whole-order acceptance is supported; accepting some lines while rejecting others in the same action isn't possible. Any line that can't be fulfilled is turned down through the reject action instead (see Cancellations below) rather than left unactioned. Once accepted, the order becomes ready for shipping.
Order information we store
The specs reviewed focus mainly on order status and fulfilment mechanics rather than a full field-by-field list of captured order data. What is documented:
- Order status, tracked through Pentagon Connect as: newly placed, awaiting our acknowledgement, accepted and being prepared, shipped, or cancelled
- A single customer order can arrive from Secret Sales already split into more than one delivery, each carrying its own order reference
- Carrier and tracking details, once an order has shipped
A delivered order is shown the same way as a shipped order, since Pentagon Connect doesn't have a separate "delivered" status for this integration. Further field-level detail beyond this (e.g. full billing/shipping address capture, buyer contact details, pricing breakdown) is not documented in the current source material.
Shipping orders
Once an order is accepted, we register shipment details against it, which also marks it shipped. A single order can be split across multiple shipments, but only at the full-line level — a line's entire quantity ships together in one go, and a line can't be moved to a different shipment once assigned, so any split needs to be planned upfront rather than adjusted afterwards.
Carriers are matched to Secret Sales' own courier list, using our own carrier-mapping first, falling back to an account-level default courier, and finally to the carrier name as we have it recorded — so tracking information is never lost even without an exact match. Customer-facing tracking display itself is handled by Parcel Perform and needs no separate work on our side.
Cancellations
An order can be cancelled once it has been accepted and is ready for shipping. This is distinct from a reject, which happens earlier, before an order is accepted.
Refunds & returns
Refunds can be issued once the relevant line has shipped, and can be full or partial by quantity. Returns are managed physically by ZigZag; once a returned item is inspected, we process the refund, with an expected turnaround of 7 days from receiving the return back.
Reject is a separate action from both cancel and refund — it applies only at the acceptance stage, before an order is confirmed, and is used to turn down a line we can't fulfil (for example, because it's out of stock) rather than leave it unactioned.
The specific reasons available for refunds, cancellations and rejects are maintained by Secret Sales and refreshed on our side regularly, rather than being a fixed list we control — see Return & Refund Reason Codes below for what's currently documented.
Claims / incidents
Not documented in current source material — no equivalent to La Redoute's claims/incident mechanism appears in the Secret Sales specs reviewed.
Carriers Supported
Secret Sales maintains its own controlled list of couriers, covering major carriers such as Evri, DHL, DPD, FedEx, Royal Mail and Amazon Logistics, among dozens of others and regional variants. A carrier used on a shipment is matched against that list via our own carrier-mapping first; if there's no match, an account-level default carrier is used; if neither applies, the carrier name is still sent through as recorded, so tracking information isn't lost.
Return & Refund Reason Codes
Reason codes for refunds, cancellations and rejects are not a fixed list we maintain — they're defined and controlled by Secret Sales and pulled in on our side regularly, so exact wording can change over time. The one reason applied automatically on our side: a rejected line is always recorded against "out of stock". Beyond that, the current full list of refund/cancel reason text isn't reproduced here since it's centrally managed and subject to change.
Known Limitations
- No real-time order/return/stock updates — everything is picked up on a polling schedule rather than pushed to us instantly
- Price and stock can't be updated independently — a change to either always pushes both together
- Price and stock protection settings are not honoured on this integration, unlike most other marketplace connectors
- Order acceptance is whole-order only — there's no way to accept some lines and reject others in the same action
- Partial shipment is supported only at the full-line level — a line's full quantity must ship together, and can't be reassigned to a different shipment afterwards
- No separate "delivered" status — a delivered order is shown the same as a shipped one
- A handful of order status mappings (rejected orders, full returns, and partial returns) are flagged in the source material as still needing confirmation before this goes live
- Cancelled doesn't automatically mean fully refunded, or vice versa — the two aren't currently tracked as strictly linked
- Secret Sales does not currently appear on Pentagon Connect's list of active marketplaces, and this integration is understood to update an existing setup rather than being a brand-new build
- Deactivating or removing a live listing isn't documented in the current source material
Source Materials
This guide was built from Secret Sales' own integration specifications covering authentication, taxonomy, product and inventory management, order retrieval and acceptance, shipping, and refunds, cancellations and rejects.