If you have pushed products and nothing appeared on Amazon, this is almost certainly why. Amazon requires a product type on every listing, and the app will not guess one for you.

A product type is Amazon's way of saying what kind of thing you are selling: SHIRT, COFFEE_MAKER, PET_FOOD, and so on. It is not decoration. The product type decides which attributes Amazon demands on the listing. A shirt has to declare a size and a colour. A coffee maker has to declare a wattage. Those requirements also differ from one marketplace to the next, so the same product type can ask for different fields in the United Kingdom than it does in Germany.

Because of that, the app stores the product type per marketplace.

The Needs type badge

On the Product Sync screen, a product with no product type mapped for your selected marketplaces shows the Needs type badge. It will not be pushed. If you try, the app tells you plainly:

Set an Amazon product type for this category (per marketplace) before pushing.

Warning

There is no fallback or default product type. The app will never pick one on your behalf and hope for the best, because the wrong product type produces a listing that Amazon suppresses or that surfaces in the wrong search results. Nothing publishes until you set the type.

How the mapping works

The app does not ask you for a product type on every product. That would be unbearable for a catalogue of any size. Instead it maps your Shopify category to an Amazon product type.

The mapping applies to every product in that Shopify category. Set the type once for "Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Shirts & Tops" and every current and future Shopify product in that category is covered, on that marketplace. This is one-time setup per category, not per product, and it is the reason a bit of patience at the start pays off across your whole catalogue.

Setting a type

1. On the Product Sync list, find a product showing Needs type and choose Set type. You can also reach the flow from the product's detail page.
2. The app reads the product's Shopify category and suggests an Amazon product type for it. The suggestion is a starting point, not a decision. Read it and sanity-check it against what you actually sell.
3. Confirm the suggestion, or search for and pick a different Amazon product type.
4. If you publish to more than one marketplace, tick the option to use the same type for all selected marketplaces. In most cases this is the right call, since a shirt is a shirt everywhere. The app then writes the mapping once per marketplace for you.
5. Save. The Needs type badge clears for every product in that Shopify category.

Tip

Sort or filter your product list by category before you start. Working category by category means each Set type you complete unblocks a whole block of products at once, and you will usually find that a handful of mappings covers the majority of your catalogue.

The Re-check type warning

You may see a Re-check type badge on a product that is otherwise fine. This means the product has a product type mapped for some of your selected marketplaces but not all of them.

It happens most often when you add a new marketplace to Marketplaces to publish to after you have already done your category setup. Your existing mappings cover the old marketplaces; the new one has nothing. Open Set type again and complete the mapping for the marketplace that is missing one.

Treat Re-check type as a genuine blocker rather than a cosmetic warning. A product that is only typed for two of your three marketplaces will only be published to two of them.

Choosing the right type

A few points worth knowing before you choose:

• Be as specific as Amazon lets you be. A more specific type usually means more required attributes, but it also means your listing is understood properly and shows up in the right browse nodes and filters.
• The type drives the required attributes. Once a type is set, the app fetches Amazon's schema for it and checks your product against it. Anything Amazon insists on that your Shopify data does not supply surfaces as "{n} required attribute(s) missing". See Required Shopify fields for how to clear those, and Field mapping for how to feed them from a metafield or a static value.
• Changing the type later is allowed, but it changes the required attribute set, so expect the app to ask for fields it did not previously want. Re-push after you change it.
• If your Shopify categories are messy, fix them in Shopify first. The mapping is only as good as the category it is attached to. Products sitting in a vague or wrong category will inherit a product type that does not suit them.

Related articles

• Product Sync for the publishing pipeline as a whole.
• Required Shopify fields for the Brand and Description gate and Amazon's schema-required attributes.
• Field mapping for supplying attributes that Shopify does not hold natively.
• Listing issues for what to do when Amazon accepts a push but complains about it.