Company
How we keep a 61,000-item catalog clean
Sixty-one thousand hardware SKUs, four distributors who each name things differently, and one rule that settles every argument.
Teddy Larkspur
Engineer
Aug 5, 2026
4 min read
When a store starts on Aisle, it either brings its own item file or starts from ours. Ours has 61,000 lines in it, and keeping those lines honest is most of what one of our engineers does.
The same screw, four names
Every distributor names an item the way their warehouse thinks about it. One sells deck screws by the pound, one by the box, one by the count, and all three call the thread something different. Merging those into one line is the job.
The rule we settled on is simple: the catalog describes what the customer asks for at the counter, and everything else — pack size, case cost, distributor part number — hangs off that as a supplier record.
- One item, many supplier records, so a second source is a row and not a duplicate.
- Units are stored as the counter sells them, converted on the way to the order.
- Nothing is merged automatically above a confidence threshold that a person set.
Why it matters for a minimum
A duplicate line is two bins in the system and one bin in the store. The counts split, both fall under their minimums, and Aisle orders twice. Most of the catalog work is really stockout prevention wearing a different hat.
