Shopify product data and catalogue management
The problem
The store platform’s bulk-import tool, Matrixify for example, reports a successful import even when it has quietly broken something. The product looks right in the store admin, but the SKU, barcode or stock level has become orphaned, or a product category has been silently rejected. The error is usually noticed only once a customer or the warehouse notices it first.
What we do
We avoid the documented failure modes of the store platform’s bulk-import tool: a linked variant option, a size or colour tied to a product metaobject for example, rebuilds variant IDs if the link is dropped from an import, orphaning the SKU, barcode, stock level and cost price even though the import looks successful. An empty metafield in an update file clears the value rather than leaving it untouched. The platform’s own product taxonomy and the search engine’s taxonomy are not the same thing: an invalid taxonomy path is silently rejected even when the import reports success. A full catalogue export is never used as the base for the next import if another import could have run in between, because a stale base overwrites a more recent, separate change.
We model colour and material as separate products where needed, rather than as variant attributes, and separate the code value, a material code for example, from the displayed, translated value, otherwise a translation tool breaks the feed by translating the code field as well. We build new-product image, data and price lookup straight from the source system through the platform’s write API, without manual copying, and lock write access behind a separate flag in code, because a live store often has no dedicated test environment. We generate multilingual product content from a single source-language base: translations are derived from it, and a separate glossary tool keeps languages consistent.
What you own
The import templates, the checklist and the source-system read library, in your own repository. You control write access to your own store platform. It stays behind a flag, never on by default.
What we don’t promise
- An error-free import every time. The checklist prevents known failure modes, but new ones appear. We log them on the same basis as the current ones.
- Full language coverage for translation quality checks. It currently covers only part of the language pairs. We tell you exactly which.
- Real-time product data on every field. Some data updates on a schedule, not with a second’s delay, and we always say which applies.
First step
One import file, or one new product, that we walk through together first.