Brand-to-collection mapping

Every brand card on your directory needs to link somewhere. Easy Brand Page figures that out automatically in three stages, with overrides available at every level.

The three-stage matcher

When a customer clicks a brand card, the link target is decided like this:

1. Manual mapping check. If you've mapped this brand to a collection yourself on the Brands page, use that.
2. Auto-match check. If "Match brands to collections" is on in Settings, look for a collection whose name or handle matches the vendor name (normalised: "Nike" becomes nike, "Wren & Oak" becomes wren-and-oak). If found, use it.
3. Vendor-search fallback. Otherwise, use the search URL template. By default that's /collections/vendors?q=%brand%, which is Shopify's native vendor filter.

One override sits above all three: a brand with a website link and the Send shoppers to this website instead switch turned on (both set in the Brand pages editor) links straight to that website, in a new tab - from the directory, the slider, and the product-page Brand link block alike.

The matcher runs at sync time and caches the result. Customers never wait for a lookup; the link is rendered as part of the static Liquid output.

Confidence levels

Internally, Easy Brand Page tags each mapping with a confidence level:

• Manual mapping: 100% (you said so).
• Collection auto-match: 95% (handle matches normalised vendor).
• Vendor search fallback: 70% (works, but lands on a system page rather than a curated collection).

The Source column on the Brands page shows which one won for each brand. The matcher prefers manual over auto over fallback - more specific mappings are more trustworthy. To see all brands of one kind at once, use the filter button next to the search bar: the View options include Mapped manually, Auto-matched collection, Search link only, plus Favorites, Hidden brands, Missing logo, and Not on storefront (brands none of whose products are Active and published to the Online Store channel - they exist in the app but can't render on the page). The last option, Removed brands, holds the vendors you took out of your list, each with a Restore brand action in its Edit menu.

Mapping a brand by hand

To point a brand at a specific collection, regardless of naming:

1. Open Brands.
2. Find the brand and click its Collection mapping cell.
3. Search for the collection in the picker and select it.

The mapping saves as Manual, publishes to the storefront right away, and survives future scans - the scan keeps your choice until you change it.

When auto-match works well

Auto-match is reliable when your collection naming matches your vendor naming:

• Vendor "Nike" with collection handle nike - matches.
• Vendor "Wren & Oak" with collection handle wren-and-oak - matches.
• Vendor "Carhartt WIP" with collection handle carhartt-wip - matches.

It struggles when:

• Your collection is named something like mens-nike-2026 rather than nike.
• You spell vendors inconsistently across products ("Nike" vs "nike" vs "Nike Inc.").
• You haven't created collections per vendor in the first place.

In those cases, the matcher falls back to the search URL, which always works - or you map the brand by hand. If a brand links somewhere unexpected, see fixing wrong link targets.

The vendor search URL fallback

Shopify ships a built-in vendor filter at /collections/vendors. This page lists every product whose Vendor field exactly matches the query, with no special setup required.

Easy Brand Page uses this as the safety net. Every brand will at minimum link here. Customers land on a working product list even if no collection exists.

If you want to customise the fallback URL (e.g. to use a different filter), set the Search URL template in Settings:

• Default: /collections/vendors?q=%brand%
• Custom example: /search?type=product&q=vendor:%22%brand%%22

%brand% is replaced with the vendor name (URL-encoded).

Out-of-stock brands and links

When every product from a vendor sells out, the vendor is marked out of stock and hidden from the directory by default. If you've configured "Show out-of-stock brands" in Settings, the card still renders but the link target remains the same (collection or search URL) - the destination is just going to be empty for the moment.

Multi-collection vendors

If a vendor sells through multiple collections (e.g. "Nike Shoes" and "Nike Apparel"), the matcher picks the one with an exact handle match if one exists, otherwise the first one found alphabetically. Use a manual mapping if you want a specific collection to win.

What happens during the sync

At sync time, Easy Brand Page:

1. Builds a list of every unique vendor.
2. Builds a list of every collection (title + handle + image).
3. For each vendor, runs the three-stage matcher.
4. Writes the resulting brand list (with link targets) to the shop metafield.
5. The theme block reads the metafield and renders the directory.

The matcher is deterministic - same inputs produce the same outputs. So once you've configured naming, the links stay stable across syncs.

What's next

• Settings for mapping and visibility - every admin setting explained.
• When brands re-sync - the triggers that re-run the matcher.