A Merchandiser's Guide to Reviewing a Public Shopify Collection
Turn a public Shopify collection into a focused range review, with source evidence, variant checks and a clear supplier question list.
A merchandise review usually begins with a business question: does a supplier's range cover the products and options we need?
The export is working material for that question. A large spreadsheet is not the decision itself. This guide shows how to build a focused review from a public collection while keeping source facts separate from merchandising judgment.
Define what the review should decide
Choose one category and write its requirements before collecting. For an illustrative rainwear review, those might include required sizes, available colors, exposed material descriptions and image coverage.
Specify whether the review is for a current assortment discussion, a supplier question list or a later import-mapping exercise. Those deliverables need different analysis columns.
Do not treat a public collection as the supplier's private inventory or approved wholesale catalog. Use an authorized source when the decision requires information the public storefront does not expose.
Capture the relevant scope
Open the intended public collection in Catalog Prep and choose its capture action. Keep the popup open, preview several returned products and download the files.
Save the original archive with the source URL and observation date. Read the selected scope and capture status in the manifest before expanding the job. Pro has no fixed product or variant cap per run; Free captures use the remaining monthly allowance. Available browser memory, storage and source access can still limit a large capture.
If you collect from several stores, preserve each source's identity and scope separately. Equivalent category names do not establish identical assortments or sampling methods.
Build a review copy
Keep source fields intact, then add your own decisions in a copy:
| Review column | What to record |
|---|---|
| Requirement | The size, material, category or asset detail the review needs |
| Source evidence | The product/variant identity and exposed value |
| Assessment | Meets, needs clarification, or not assessed |
| Question | What the supplier needs to confirm |
| Next action | Keep for discussion, request information, or exclude from this review |
The distinction between “missing in this source” and “supplier does not offer it” is important. A public field omission alone cannot establish the latter.
Review options at the variant level
Use a product with multiple sizes or colors to check that the returned relationships are intact. Count products separately from variant rows, and preserve identifiers as text. The SKU and variant guide provides a detailed acceptance check.
A missing or reused SKU should remain a review item rather than silently deleting a valid identity. Avoid building your entire matching process around SKU uniqueness without checking the source.
Catalog Prep provides a text-typed Excel workbook, exact CSV and structured JSON. Choose the view that lets you inspect the relationship you need rather than flattening every question into one cell.
Make price and asset notes precise
Retain the source amount, currency evidence and capture date. Unknown currency should stay visible. Any conversion or commercial assumption belongs in separate analysis, not in the original value.
Check image references against the product. Catalog Prep exports links and available associations, not the image files themselves. If the next workflow needs asset reuse or download, confirm the relevant permissions and plan that step separately.
Keep source tags separate from your internal category labels. Your classification may be useful, but it should not appear to be something the supplier published.
Finish with decisions and questions
Summarize the scope reviewed, usable records, unresolved coverage limits and the few findings relevant to the original business question.
For the illustrative rainwear task, the result could be a shortlist of products to discuss, the sizes that need clarification, and the asset information still required. It is not a claim about supplier sales, stock quantity, margin or fulfillment reliability.
The next person should be able to trace a review note back to a source identity and understand what was observed versus inferred.
Start with one collection in Catalog Prep, preserve the source files, and make the question list before planning any destination import. The extension helps prepare the material; the review gives it a business purpose.