Aligning a Shopify catalog restructure across marketing and operations
I brought the website, marketplace and commercial teams to an approved restructuring plan for a catalog with more than 250 variants across seven product pages.
- Client
- US bedding company / Shopify and Amazon
- Period
- December 2025 / stage-gate decision on 18 December
- Contribution
- Stage-gate facilitation, stakeholder alignment and implementation readiness
An approved plan. Clear implementation priorities.
The team approved a three-phase Shopify restructuring plan: simplify the main product catalog, improve product-page UX, then streamline the homepage and navigation. The decision protected marketplace and wholesale dependencies while giving the implementation team a defined pilot and sequence.
The challenge
The Shopify catalog made a high-demand bedding product harder to shop than it needed to be. More than 250 variants were spread across seven product detail pages, with color-family tabs connecting separate pages.
The website review identified repeated page loads, hidden options, too much choice, and weak mobile scrolling. The four-piece sheet set accounted for roughly 40% of year-to-date website sales, making it the first priority.
The restructuring also needed to preserve active SKUs used for marketplace price verification and wholesale ordering.
My contribution
I facilitated the 18 December 2025 stage-gate meeting to review the proposed solution and reach a go/no-go decision.
The website specialist presented the SKU analysis and implementation approach. I brought the discussion back to the phases, dependencies, stakeholder questions, and approval needed to move forward.
Marketplace and commercial stakeholders confirmed that the proposed grouping could proceed while all SKUs remained active. I closed the meeting with the green light for implementation.
The approved catalog approach
The plan prioritized the highest-revenue options in the main shopping journey:
- The top four sizes represented 88% of four-piece product revenue.
- The top 25 colors represented 80% of product revenue.
- Solid colors were organized into a proposed primary page with 100 variants.
- Patterns were organized into a second primary page with 36 variants.
- Remaining SKUs stayed active through secondary pages for the business functions that needed them.
This addressed the variant structure the team was working with at the time. It simplified the primary buying journey without removing the broader catalog.
A staged implementation plan
The approved sequence had three phases:
- Catalog restructuring: migrate variants, transfer metafields and images, and remap inventory.
- Product-page UX: review the buying flow using GA4, Microsoft Clarity, and product-performance comparisons.
- Homepage and navigation: prioritize hero products, reduce unnecessary page length, and reorganize navigation around usage data.
The migration plan started with a five-to-ten-SKU pilot before expanding to the rest of the catalog. Implementation was sequenced around the marketplace verification dependency.
The result
The meeting produced an approved cross-functional plan, agreement on catalog dependencies, and a clear starting point for the delivery team.
My contribution was turning a website improvement proposal into a decision the teams could execute: priorities were explicit, the phased approach was agreed, and marketplace and wholesale requirements were retained.
Source notes
December 2025 Shopify restructuring presentation and the stage-gate meeting transcript dated 18 December 2025.
Related expertise
Website development, conversion optimization, and marketing and sales operations.
Source: the 18 December 2025 stage-gate transcript and SKU restructuring presentation. This case covers the completed planning and approval phase.
