Product types & channel categories
Publishing a product to a marketplace means telling that marketplace which of its categories the product belongs in — and every channel has its own category tree. Done product by product, that's one decision per product per channel, repeated forever.
A product type is your answer to what is this product? — a small tree you build yourself, like Baby clothing › Accessories › Hats & beanies. Put one on each product, then map each type to a category on each channel, and SKU.io fills the category in for you every time you publish. Fifteen beanies become one decision instead of fifteen. Add a sixteenth beanie next month and it inherits the answer.
How it fits together
- Build the tree on Settings → Products → Product Types — up to three levels, named however your catalog thinks.
- Put a type on each product, by hand, in bulk, through a spreadsheet, or by letting AI propose them.
- Map each type to a category on PIM → Publish → Categories, once per channel.
- Publish — from a product's Listings tab, from a cell on PIM → Publish, or in bulk. The category is already filled in, and it brings the category's default listing template — and that template's listing profile — with it.
You can adopt this a corner at a time. Type one brand's products, map one channel, and leave the rest of the catalog exactly as it is — untyped products keep publishing the way they always have, with the picker asking each time.
When you need it
- You sell the same kinds of product over and over, and you're picking the same channel category by hand again and again.
- You're onboarding a new channel and don't want to reclassify the whole catalog for it.
- You publish in bulk and want a mixed selection — beanies, bibs and bodysuits in one go — to land in the right places without splitting the batch.
If you're only ever listing a handful of one-off products, you don't need this. The publish wizard's picker still works exactly as it did.
SKU.io also has a long-standing Type field — Standard, Kit, Bundle, Matrix, Blemished, Manufactured — which decides a product's shape. It's a different field with a confusingly similar name, and the two sit in adjacent columns on the products list once you turn the Product type column on. See Product type vs Type.
Sections
- Build your product types — build the tree and put a type on every product.
- Map to channel categories — map each type to a category on each channel, then publish.
How-to guides
- Build your product type tree — create, rename and re-parent types; groups versus leaves.
- Put product types on your products — the four ways to assign a type, and how to find the products still missing one.
- Map product types to channel categories — the map page, its tabs, suggestions, and saving safely alongside colleagues.
- Override a channel category for one product — pin a different category for the one product that doesn't fit its type.
- Propose product types with AI — type a whole catalog in one reviewable pass.
- Archive, merge and tidy product types — retiring and consolidating types without losing their mappings.
- Import and export product types — the spreadsheet route, column by column.
- Publish in bulk with resolved categories — publish a mixed selection in one pass, with a category resolved per product.
Concepts
- How a channel category is chosen — override, then type map, then nothing; what each Source label means; and why fixing a map doesn't move drafts you already created.
- Product type vs Type — the two similarly-named fields, and the five places the difference costs you.
Reference
- Product type rules & limits — every limit and batch size, what each screen refuses and the message you see, and the permission each action needs.
Where this leads
Product types exist to make publishing quieter, so the last step of this section is the first step of another one:
- How multichannel listings work — what a listing is, and what happens to it after you publish.
- Browse your channel listings — find, check and re-publish what's live on each channel.