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Product Taxonomy and Data Cleansing
Schuler Shoes
Schuler Shoes traces its heritage to 1889, when Austrian immigrant Vincent Schuler acquired a shoe store in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Now in its fifth generation of family ownership after 130+ years of operations, the company operates nine retail locations across Minnesota alongside a national eCommerce platform serving the entire United States market. Schuler Shoes' product portfolio features premium footwear brands including New Balance, Birkenstock, and Sperry, with a brand promise centered on exceptional customer experience and product quality.
THE CHALLENGE:
In preparation for migration to a new eCommerce platform, Schuler Shoes required a comprehensive overhaul of its product information architecture. The existing category structure and attribute organization proved inadequate for delivering the refined digital shopping experience customers expect when purchasing highly personal, specification-driven products like footwear.
The engagement scope encompassed multiple interdependent workstreams: taxonomy restructuring, product data normalization, and enhanced discovery functionality including parametric filtering and faceted search capabilities—all critical for enabling efficient product navigation and informed purchase decisions in the footwear category.
THE SOLUTION:
Our team executed an end-to-end taxonomy optimization and data enhancement program designed to establish scalable product information infrastructure aligned with Schuler Shoes' platform migration.
• Developed a comprehensive category tree defining logical product groupings and sub-category relationships
• Created standardized attribute templates specifying product-level data fields and controlled value lists for each category
• Established taxonomic foundations supporting consistent product classification and metadata collection
Phase 2: Data Normalization and Cleansing
• Standardized attribute values to eliminate inconsistencies and formatting variations
• Normalized product data to ensure schema compliance and semantic consistency
• Validated data integrity to support downstream system integration requirements
Phase 3: Parametric Search Enablement
• Developed parametric filtering logic enabling multi-attribute product refinement
• Constructed faceted search architecture with intuitive left-hand navigation
• Configured filter hierarchies optimized for footwear-specific search patterns (size, width, brand, style, material, etc.)
Phase 4: Governance Framework
The engagement concluded with documentation of taxonomy maintenance protocols, providing Schuler Shoes with formal guidelines for ensuring ongoing classification consistency and data quality as the catalog evolves.
THE OUTCOME:
The restructured taxonomy and enhanced navigation capabilities positioned Schuler Shoes to deliver superior product discovery experiences on their new eCommerce platform. Customers gained efficient pathways to relevant products through intuitive filtering, supported by comprehensive, standardized product information enabling confident purchase decisions in a category where fit and specification details drive conversion.