# How Whatnot's Taxonomy Keeps Pace with a Marketplace That Won't Sit Still

DevFeed: [How Whatnot's Taxonomy Keeps Pace with a Marketplace That Won't Sit Still](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/how-whatnot-s-taxonomy-keeps-pace-with-a-marketplace-that-won-t-sit-still-23710.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://medium.com/whatnot-engineering/how-whatnots-taxonomy-keeps-pace-with-a-marketplace-that-won-t-sit-still-ba934c2e4a8d?source=rss----162aeca881b0---4>)

Author: Whatnot Engineering

Published: 2026-03-25T14:22:19Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Whatnot Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/whatnot-engineering.md>)

Topics: [recommendations](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/recommendations.md>), [bug](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/bug.md>), [real-time](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/real-time.md>)

Tags: [2025](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/2025.md>), [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [bug](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/bug.md>), [ecommerce](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ecommerce.md>), [machine-learning](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/machine-learning.md>), [onboarding](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/onboarding.md>), [platform](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/platform.md>), [real-time](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/real-time.md>), [recommendation-system](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/recommendation-system.md>), [recommendations](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/recommendations.md>), [taxonomy](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/taxonomy.md>)

## AI overview

Whatnot describes how it redesigned its marketplace taxonomy to change more rapidly across countries and discovery surfaces. The article explains why onboarding, browse, search, and recommendations need different taxonomy treatments, using supply-aware onboarding and the Labubu category as examples.

## Source excerpt

Marcus Gee | Discovery The hottest trends don't happen over months, but start suddenly. At Whatnot, our best sellers update their strategies in real time to stay in step with the market. Connecting buyers and sellers in this fast-changing landscape is one of the most important problems Whatnot solves, but in 2025, it was a major challenge. In this post, we're going to walk through how we overhauled the taxonomy system to evolve more rapidly, so our team could help new communities grow. There is No Single Taxonomy Whatnot supports over 200 categories across seven countries, and that number increases weekly. Our taxonomy is a platform primitive that underpins nearly every discovery experience. It shapes onboarding (what categories new users see), browse (how they navigate), search (how results are ranked), and recommendations (what their feed looks like). A bug in taxonomy doesn't break one feature; it degrades the entire discovery surface. That makes every change high-stakes. Here's what we learned the hard way: maintaining a single taxonomy doesn't work. A single taxonomy can't optimally serve onboarding, browse, and search at the same time, because these surfaces have different goals. Let's look at two examples to understand why: When new users join Whatnot, they choose categories they're interested in. That choice shapes the first feed they see. If a user selects a niche category with limited supply, their initial experience may feel sparse or low quality. For this reason, onboarding taxonomies are country-specific and supply-aware. We fold categories into broader parents, reorder them, or exclude them based on local marketplace density. Categories play a critical role in connecting enthusiasts and sellers. When Labubu surged in 2025, it was subcategorized under Toys, and new users struggled to find relevant shows. When we elevated Labubu to the first page of onboarding (a similar treatment given to other big categories like Pokémon Cards), it reduced this frictio