Brands

Give each product its brand, or several of them when it is a collaboration, and every integration you sell on gets that brand with the product.

A brand is a label you make once and then attach to as many products as you want. The brand has the name, a description, links to the brand’s own pages, a logo and a banner. You write all of that in one place, and every product you attach the brand to shares it.

Most people create brands for one of three reasons. They want to group their products by who makes them, they want the brand field filled in on the stores and marketplaces they sell through, or they want to find products by maker later. A product can have several brands, and a product with no brand at all is fine.

You find your brands under Catalog, in Brands. The Create brand button is at the right end of the toolbar above the list. The table under it lists every brand you have, one row each, with a count of how many products use it, and clicking a row opens that brand so you can edit it.

One thing to know first: brands do not nest. There is no parent brand and no sub-brand, so your brands are in one flat list however many you have. If you need something that nests, that is what categories are for.

Before you start

Two things can stop you. Everything else on this page can wait until you need it.

What your role lets you do

Below Manager you get no buttons at the end of a row, no checkboxes down the left of the list, and no selection bar. Everything those lead to is above your role, so you see nothing you cannot use. Roles are set in team, roles and permissions.

Merging and deleting cannot be undone

How to create a brand

1. 1

   Open the brand dialog

   From Catalog, select Brands, then click Create brand at the right end of the toolbar above the list. A dialog opens over the page with the brand’s fields running down it.

2. 2

   Name the brand

   Type into the Name field at the top of the dialog. The Slug field at the bottom fills itself in as you type.

3. 3

   Describe it and add its links

   Write a description in the editor under Name. Under that is an empty row for a website: type the address, then click the + button inside the address box. You can skip both.

4. 4

   Upload the images

   Below the website rows are three drop areas, labeled Logo, Banner and Resources. Drop an image on Logo, another on Banner, and put anything else you want kept with the brand on Resources.

5. 5

   Save it

   Fill in Meta Title and Meta Description near the bottom if you want them, then click Create.

That is the whole flow. Your brand appears in the list right away, and a small message confirms it was created. If you have connected an integration that keeps brands of its own, the brand starts going there on its own.

Only Name and Slug are required, so a brand with nothing else on it still groups your products and still goes to your integrations. Everything below explains the dialog, the list and the three actions at the end of every row. You do not need any of it to create one.

Every option in detail

The brand dialog is the same dialog whether you are creating a brand or editing one, and it opens either from Create brand above the list or from clicking a row. The button at the bottom of it reads Create on a new brand and Update on one you already have. The list under the toolbar is where you find, filter, duplicate, merge and delete your brands.

Closing the dialog with unsaved edits asks you to confirm first, and you can either throw the edits away or go back to editing. Clicking outside the dialog or pressing Escape does the same thing. There is no draft to come back to.

What goes in each field

Your fields run down the brand dialog in this order, from the top. That dialog opens from Create brand above the list, or from clicking any row in the list.

The two search-engine fields count your characters as you type and turn the counter orange past 60 and 160 characters. That is a suggestion and not a stop, so you can keep typing to 200 and 300 if your text needs the room.

Adding the brand’s websites

Your website rows are in the brand dialog between the description editor and the three image areas. Each row is a pair: a Label box on the left for what to call the link, and an address box on the right. Addresses have to start with http:// or https://.

Adding one is a two-part move, and this is where people get stuck. The top row is not a website yet, it is where you type a new one. Type the address, then click the + button inside the right-hand end of that same box, or press Enter. The row drops into the list under it and the top row empties, ready for the next one.

Once a row is in the list, you can edit either box in place. Two small buttons are at the right end of every row: one opens that address in a new tab, and one takes the row out. The open button is grayed out until the address is valid. With two rows or more you also get a drag handle on the left of each row, so you can put them in the order you want. The first row is the one the list shows.

A repeat is judged loosely, so you do not have to match your own typing exactly. Capitals and a trailing slash are ignored, which makes https://acme.com/ and HTTPS://ACME.COM the same address as far as the check is concerned.

Where the slug comes from

The Slug field is at the bottom of the brand dialog. It is the part of your web address that names this brand.

While you are creating a brand, the slug follows the Name field as you type, so Garmin International gives you garmin-international. It stops following the second you edit the slug yourself, because at that point you have told it what you want.

On a brand that already exists, the slug never follows a name edit. So renaming Garmin to Garmin International leaves your web address on garmin until you change the slug too. Check the slug before you rename anything, because a slug that moves takes every address built from it with it.

Whatever you type in the slug box is tidied into slug shape when you save, so capitals and spaces come back as lowercase and hyphens.

When a name or a slug is already taken

Two of your brands cannot share a name, and two cannot share a slug. The brand dialog checks both across your whole organization while you type, and shows the problem under whichever field it came from. The Create button stays inactive until you pick something else.

The message names which of the two clashed, so read the one under the field you were typing in and change that field. On a name, changing only the capitals is not enough.

Saving while someone else has the brand open

The top of the brand dialog shows you who else has it open right now, and whether they are only looking or actually editing.

If they save first, your save is rejected instead of silently overwriting theirs, and you get a message saying the brand was changed by another user. A notice appears above the fields with a Reload button on it. Reloading brings their version in and throws your unsaved edits away, and the fields they touched flash blue as the new values appear. So read what changed before you click it.

If your own form has no unsaved edits, none of this happens. The dialog just refreshes itself and the changed fields flash.

Reading the brands list

The list under the toolbar has one row per brand of yours.

The list opens 50 rows at a time, and the page-size control at the bottom right switches you to 25 or 100. Three more buttons are at the right of the toolbar above the list. Columns hides any column you do not want, Filter opens the filter panel, and Density makes your rows tighter or looser.

Click a column header to sort by it. Logo and Websites are the two you cannot sort or filter on, because one is a picture and the other is a list.

Searching and filtering your brands

Search is at the left end of the toolbar above the list. Click it, type, and it looks at three things at once: the name, the slug and the description. Both the search and the filters run across every brand you have, not just the page you are looking at, so a match on page 40 still turns up.

Filter is at the right of that same toolbar, between Columns and Density. Click it and a panel opens with one empty condition row waiting for you. A condition has three parts, left to right:

Add filter at the bottom of the panel gives you a second row. As soon as you have two, a Logic operator dropdown appears above them: set it to And to require both conditions, or to Or to accept either. Remove all empties the panel, and the small trash button at the left of a row takes that one row out.

Which comparisons you get depends on the column:

A count column has no is empty. A brand with no products has a count of 0, not a blank, so equals (=) with 0 is the comparison that answers your question. The section below does exactly that.

Finding the brands no product uses

This is the most common thing people want from the filters, so here it is end to end. Click Filter in the toolbar above the list. In the condition row that opens, set Filter by to Products, set Operator to equals (=), and type 0 into Value. The list now shows every brand no product is using, which is your cleanup list.

The same panel answers a second common question. Set Filter by to Created by, leave Operator on is, and pick Any integration in the Value dropdown. You get the brands a store invented on its own rather than the ones your team typed. Changing that last choice to Any import or Any data source splits the rest the same way.

Saving a filter as a view

A set of filters you use often is worth keeping. Set any condition in the filter panel, which opens from Filter in the toolbar above the brands list, and a control appears in the page header up beside the title, reading Unsaved View. Two buttons are next to that control: Reset puts the list back the way it was, and Save View keeps this set of filters under a name.

Once you have a saved view, that same control names whichever view you are looking at, and it says Unsaved Changes when you have changed something on it. Save As then makes a second view instead of overwriting the first, and Set as Default decides which view you get next time. A default is yours alone, so setting one does not change what your teammates see. Saved views and filters cover both in full.

Putting a brand on a product

You do this from the product, never from the brand. The brand dialog has no place to add products, and that is the one thing about brands that surprises people most.

Open the product from Catalog, in Products, scroll to its Taxonomy section, and click the Brands field. A picker opens with every brand you have in it and a search box at the top. Check as many as you want, then click Save at the bottom of the picker. Closing the picker any other way throws away what you checked.

The order is the order you picked them in, and nothing drags. To change which brand is primary, clear the Brands field and choose again, starting with the one you want first. Your other brands still count the product among their members wherever an integration keeps a page for the brand.

On the products table, Filter in the toolbar lets you filter by Brands the same way. That dropdown lists only brands that already have at least one product, 50 matches at a time, so an unused brand is missing from it by design.

Where brands come from when no one types them

Your list can grow without anyone clicking Create brand. Three things make brands for you.

A products import matches each of your names on the name alone, ignoring capitals. A name it cannot find is handled by your answer to If Brand does not exist: on the import’s Options step, and your three choices there are Skip with warning, Create automatically and Fail the row. Pick Create automatically when your file is the source of truth for brands, and Skip with warning when you would rather look at the misses yourself. Pick Fail the row when a product with no brand on it is worse to you than no product at all.

In a data source, every value has a Mapped, New or Needed badge until you have dealt with it, so nothing arrives unmapped by accident. Data sources covers that badge.

If a data source has ever filled in part of a brand, a Data Sources button appears at the top of that brand’s dialog. Clicking it shows you which source filled each field, marked Selected. A Fallback badge means your rules did not settle it. Either no source matched your filters and the rule ran without them, or the rule still could not choose and the source updated most recently was taken.

Editing a lot of brands at once

The list gives you no way to edit several of your brands in place. The way to do it is to export your brands, edit the file in a spreadsheet, and import it back.

From Uploads, select the Imports tab, click Create import, and pick the Brands card on the first step. Brands have their own import and their own export, separate from the products ones, so you are working on brands alone and nothing else moves.

An import finds each brand by Brand Name, Brand Slug or ID, and you choose which on the wizard’s match-rules step. Brand Name ignores capitals and Brand Slug has to match exactly. Those three names read in English whatever language you use the app in.

To put the id in your file, turn on Include system fields under Advanced on the Options step of the export wizard. You get a Brand ID column, and matching on it is the safest option there is, because a name and a slug can both be edited and an id cannot.

Duplicating a brand

Duplicate is at the end of the brand’s row in the list, and in the ⋮ menu at the top of the brand dialog. Use it when a new brand is mostly the same as one you already have.

It gives you Garmin (Copy) with the slug garmin-copy, then Garmin (Copy 2) with the slug garmin-copy-2 if you do it again. You get the description, the links, the search-engine fields and all three sets of images. You get no products, so your duplicate starts on nothing and a message tells you which brand was copied.

Merging two brands into one

Merging is how you fix the same brand existing twice in your list. It moves every product from the brands you are merging away onto the one you are keeping, then deletes the rest. From the brands list, it is the only thing that moves your products between brands.

Merge is in three places. You find it at the end of the brand’s row, in the ⋮ menu at the top of the brand dialog, and in the selection bar once you have checked two rows or more.

1. 1

   Open the merge dialog

   Click Merge at the end of a row, or check two rows or more and click Merge in the selection bar that appears.

2. 2

   Say which brand you keep

   Starting from a row, the brand you came from is the one you keep, and you pick the rest from a searchable list of every brand you have. Starting from the selection bar, you pick the one to keep out of the rows you checked. Click Next.

3. 3

   Read the impact

   The second step counts what is about to happen, and gives you a Rename button beside the brand you are keeping if you also want to give it a new name. Read the three counts, then click Merge.

4. 4

   Confirm

   A dialog spells out what you are about to do. There is nothing to type. Click Merge again.

The three counts on that second step are what to read before you commit:

Renaming the survivor is optional and it leaves the slug alone. Your new name is checked against your other brands as you type, and capped at 100 characters like any brand name. Because the slug does not move, every web address built from it keeps working.

Your merge runs in the background. Starting it tells you so, and you can keep working. When it finishes you get a count of the brands merged and the products reassigned, and the list refreshes itself. Every product that moved is published again after that, so your integrations catch up on their own.

Two things surprise people about the result. A product that was already on both brands keeps the earlier of its two positions. That can move the brand you kept up your product’s list and change which brand counts as primary. And images do not move: a logo or banner on a brand you merge away comes off with it, and the brand you kept keeps only what was already its own. The files themselves stay in your library, so you can attach them again from assets.

While a merge is running on a brand you picked, the Merge button for it is unavailable and hovering it tells you why. Wait for the first merge to finish and start the second one after.

Deleting a brand

Delete is in the same three places as Merge. Look at the end of your brand’s row, in the ⋮ menu at the top of the brand dialog, and in the selection bar once you have checked a row.

A brand still attached to your products cannot be deleted, and the message tells you how many are in the way. Take the brand off those products first, or merge it into the brand you are keeping.

Clicking Delete opens a dialog that names the brand and then lists everywhere it is about to disappear from: PIM first, then every connected account where the brand is live. That list takes a moment to load, so read it rather than clicking right through. A brand that goes nowhere says so instead.

Deleting is not limited to the rows you can see. Check the box in the header of the list to take the whole page. When more brands match your filters than the page shows, a Select all button appears in the selection bar with that number on it. Click it and the delete covers every matching brand, not just the page. A run that big goes into the background with its own progress, and you can cancel it while it works. Your set is fixed the moment you confirm, so a brand created after that is never included.

A bulk delete does not stop over one row. It deletes what it can, then tells you which rows it skipped and why.

Limits

What you cannot do with a brand

What a brand becomes on each integration

What happens to your brand depends on one thing: whether that integration keeps brands as real objects of its own, or only as a word on the product.

That difference decides what your brand edits are worth. Where the brand is a real object, editing its description or its banner changes something the shopper can see. Where the brand goes out as a word on the product, only your name matters and everything else on the brand stays in the PIM.

BigCommerce is the case to watch, because it takes less than it looks like it should. It gets your name, your Meta Title and your Meta Description. It does not get your description or any of your images.

What a Shopify collection gets

Every brand becomes one collection per connected Shopify account, created as soon as the brand exists and before any product goes into it.

The address comes from your slug with brand- in front, so the brand garmin is the collection brand-garmin. That is why the slug matters more than the name here.

The collection gets your name as its title, your description, your two search-engine fields, one image and its list of products. The image is your Banner. Your Logo goes in its place when there is no banner, so a brand you only gave a logo still goes to the store with a picture. Clear both and the collection loses its image on the next push.

You decide membership here and the PIM writes it there. On every push the PIM decides which products go in your collection and adds and removes to match. So a product you added to the collection inside Shopify comes back out. Nothing about the collection is ever read back into your catalog, and integrations covers that one-way rule for every object the PIM manages.

Editing the slug moves the address and leaves a redirect behind, pointing the old address at the new one, so links already out in the world keep working. Editing the name alone leaves your address where it was.

Your collection is published when it is created and never again. So if you unpublish it in Shopify yourself, the PIM leaves it unpublished, which is what lets you hide a collection you are not ready to show. Delete it there and the PIM builds it back on the next push.

Stopping a brand from going to one account

Every account you have connected shows up as a badge at the top of the brand dialog. Hover one and a panel opens with a Sync switch beside the account name, along with when the brand was last pushed there and any error from that push.

Turning that switch off stops the account getting the brand. If the brand is already live there, you are asked to confirm first, and the only choice you get is deleting it from that channel.

The switch only has something to remove where the integration keeps your brand as an object of its own. Where the brand goes out as part of the product, turning it off takes nothing away over there.

To do the same to many brands at once, check the rows in the list and click Update integration sync in the selection bar. A dialog opens with one choice per connected account: Turn sync on, Turn sync off or Leave unchanged. Pick one for each and click Apply. The list only gives you that button once you have connected an integration that keeps brands of its own.

When something goes wrong

Messages in the brand dialog

Messages when you delete or merge

A note under the impact counts warns you when one of your imports is running, because rows for those brands may fail and need importing again after that. It does not stop the merge.

Messages from an integration

These arrive on the brand’s badge at the top of the brand dialog, on the account that rejected it, and never under the fields.

Messages from a products import

These two are about brands and neither one appears on the brands list. You read them against the row that failed, in the results of the import that produced them.

Where to go next