Stihl makes chainsaws, trimmers, blowers and cut-off saws, and the model numbers do not tell you which is which. Ask for equipment type second and a 6,000-model brand list becomes a 40-model one. ViewForge ships Brand → Type → Model → Year as the power equipment default.
Type as the second filter. Free to 50 products. Template 05: Brand / Type / Model / Year — Stihl › Chainsaw › MS 271 › 2020.
Pick Stihl and you have eliminated almost nothing — you are still looking at chainsaws, trimmers, blowers, hedge trimmers and cut-off saws. Pick Chainsaw and the list becomes readable. This is the opposite of automotive, where Make does most of the narrowing. It is also why an automotive-shaped schema makes power equipment catalogs feel broken: there is no slot for the thing that does the work.
MS 271. FS 56 RC. BR 800. These are the names, and they carry no category information — a customer holding an MS 271 knows the number on the housing and nothing else. Which is fine, as long as they can select Chainsaw first and then find their number in a list of forty instead of six thousand. ViewForge treats every dimension as free text, so model numbers, model names and product codes all work the same way.
Power equipment models run for years with small revisions, so year is a tiebreaker rather than an entry point. The default template puts it in slot four for exactly that reason, and from the $19 Starter tier you can reorder or rename all four dimensions if your catalog disagrees. Some merchants drop year entirely and use the fourth slot for a serial-range or engine-spec distinction instead.
The usual workaround for mixed equipment is separate collections per category, which duplicates merchandising work and splits your search. With Type as a real cascading dimension, chainsaws, mowers, blowers and trimmers live in one catalog and one filter. Stihl, Husqvarna, Echo, Honda, Briggs & Stratton, Toro, Cub Cadet, Troy-Bilt — brands are free text, so you add one the day you start carrying it.
Power equipment merchants usually carry a lot of SKUs against a moderate number of machines. Starter covers more stores in this vertical than any other, because 1,000 products with fitment goes a long way when parts are shared across a model line.
Install freeOne that lets equipment type be the second filter. A shopper who selects Stihl is still facing chainsaws, trimmers, blowers and cut-off saws; selecting Chainsaw next is what makes the model list usable. ViewForge ships a power equipment template of Brand / Type / Model / Year, lets you rename or reorder all four dimensions from the $19/month Starter tier, and stores fitment as Shopify metaobjects.
That is exactly what the Type dimension does. A customer picks Stihl → Chainsaw → MS 271 → 2020, or Stihl → Trimmer → FS 56 RC → 2021, and the catalog filters to parts for that specific machine. You do not need separate collections per equipment category, and you do not need a second app — it is one filter over one catalog.
Any of them. The Brand slot accepts whatever value you enter or import — Stihl, Husqvarna, Echo, Honda, Briggs & Stratton, Toro, Cub Cadet, Troy-Bilt and so on. There is no built-in brand list to be constrained by, so a brand you pick up next month is a value you add rather than a feature request you file.
Yes. The power equipment template puts Year last by default, because these models run for years with minor revisions and year is a tiebreaker rather than a starting point. From the $19/month Starter tier you can reorder and rename all four dimensions, or drop year entirely and use the fourth slot for a serial range or engine spec instead.
Free up to 50 products with fitment and no trial clock. $19/month Starter for 1,000 products with custom templates, CSV import, fuzzy matching and a coverage dashboard — the tier most stores in this vertical run on. $49/month Professional for 5,000 products plus Smart Parse. $240/month Premium for unlimited fitment records.
Power equipment is the vertical where the second dropdown does the most work. Brand alone leaves a shopper scrolling hundreds of model numbers across four product categories. Brand plus Type cuts it to a list they can actually read — and ViewForge is configured that way out of the box. see ViewForge →