Product catalog matching
Find the same product across SKUs, UPCs, and listing titles.
Your master catalog has one SKU, Amazon's listing has another, your supplier's quote sheet uses a third, and Google Shopping's feed uses a fourth. The Genie matches them all — by SKU core, UPC, brand + product name, or any combination — so you can answer 'what's my price vs. competition?' and 'what's the supplier's SKU for our top seller?'.
The problem
No two product catalogs agree on SKUs. Matching is harder than it sounds.
Your master SKU is '10042-BLK-LG'. Amazon lists it as 'ASIN B07X8YZ'. The supplier's quote sheet uses '10042/BLK/LG'. None of them match exactly.
UPCs should be the universal key — but 15-30% of rows are missing UPCs, and some have 12-digit vs 13-digit (UPC-A vs EAN) variations.
Product name variations: 'Nike Air Max 90 Black Size 10' vs 'Air Max 90 - Black (10)' vs 'Nike AM90 BLK sz 10' — same product, three sellers' conventions.
Brand normalization: 'LEGO Group' vs 'LEGO' vs 'Lego, Inc.' — same brand, scored as three different sellers.
Product re-releases muddy the waters: 'Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon' (2004) and 'Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon UCS' (2017) are different products with the same brand + first-3-tokens name.
How the Genie solves it
Product-aware matching beyond simple SKU equality
SKU core extraction
The engine extracts the 'core' of any SKU — stripping punctuation, leading zeros, and separator variations. '10042-BLK-LG', '10042/BLK/LG', and 'SKU-10042-BLK-LG' all match on the same core '10042BLKLG'.
UPC-A / EAN / ISBN normalization
12-digit UPC-A, 13-digit EAN, and 10-digit ISBN are all recognized. Leading-zero padding and check-digit validation mean scrambled UPCs don't pass as matches.
Brand normalization
'LEGO Group', 'LEGO®', 'LEGO Corporation', 'Lego, Inc.' all fold to the same brand key. Handles common legal suffixes (Inc / Ltd / Group / Holdings / Partners) and trademark symbols.
Product name 'head-2' blocking
For brand+name matching, the first two tokens of the normalized product name form a blocking key. 'Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon' and 'Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon UCS' are candidates for the same match — the full-string comparator decides if the trailing 'UCS' makes them different.
Multi-attribute scoring
When SKU is missing, the engine scores on brand + product name + attributes (color, size). Matches that agree on 3+ attributes score highly; single-attribute matches go to review.
Scales to 500K rows
Retail and marketplace catalogs are big — 200K-500K rows are common. Business tier handles these in under 3 minutes for product matching.
Real example
Supplier quote sheet matched against master catalog
Same pattern works for marketplace listings, competitor catalogs, vendor feeds.
Source file
supplier_quote.csv · supplier_sku, product_name, brand, upc
Master file
master_catalog.csv · sku, product_name, brand, upc
SKU-10042-BLK-LG · Nike Air Max 90 Black Size 10 · Nike · 194244000421
10042BLKLG · Nike AM90 Black (10) · Nike, Inc. · 194244000421
matchedSKU cores equal after normalization, UPC exact, brand folds to same key, product name fuzzy match high
LEGO-75192 · LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon UCS · LEGO Group · 673419295611
75192 · LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon UCS · LEGO · 673419295611
matchedUPC exact match; SKU core '75192' identical; brand+name match
ACME-X99 · Acme Widget Pro · Acme Corp · —
(no match)
reviewNo UPC on either side; SKU format doesn't exist in master; brand 'Acme Corp' is a known brand but no product named 'Widget Pro'. Review to decide if this is a new product or a rename.
Before and after
What changes when you use ListMatchGenie
Without ListMatchGenie
- Reconciling a supplier catalog to your master takes a week of manual SKU-by-SKU VLOOKUP.
- Missing UPCs mean exact-match approaches fail on 20%+ of rows — you have no signal left.
- Brand + name variations fragment the same product across multiple 'unmatched' rows — nobody knows which are real new products.
- Product re-releases create false positives — 'Millennium Falcon' (2004) and 'Millennium Falcon UCS' (2017) match under naive fuzzy matching, merging two genuinely-different products.
- Competitive price analysis is guesswork because you can't tell which Amazon listing is yours.
With ListMatchGenie
- Supplier catalog reconciliation in under 5 minutes for 50K-row catalogs.
- SKU-core + UPC + brand+name fallback means missing identifiers don't kill the match.
- Brand normalization groups legal-suffix variations automatically.
- Head-2 blocking on product names catches re-release pairs as candidates + the fuzzy scorer decides.
- Reliable price-competitive analysis because every listing maps to a master SKU.
Let the Genie handle the grunt work.
Free tier is real. No card. No forms. Just upload your first list and see the Genie clean and match it in under a minute.
