Luigi's Box (vendor) — independently corroborates the skip cutoff: "smaller catalogs with only a few hundred products may not require this level of complexity"

Claim: "smaller catalogs with only a few hundred products may not require this level of complexity. Simpler filtering systems often suffice in such cases, making faceted search an unnecessary investment in time and resources."

Source: Luigi's Box (vendor — search software), "Faceted Search: What Is It and Why Your E-Shop Needs It" (accessed June 2026).

Confidence: Industry-consensus — two independent vendors (HawkSearch (vendor — concedes against interest) — for catalogs of "just a few dozen products," basic search and navigation are adequate and Prefixbox (vendor — faceted-search software, concedes against interest) — skip faceted search if catalog <200 products; implementation cost outweighs UX value) state the same cutoff.

Why this matters for Candid: Independent vendor #3 reaches the same skip threshold. When three competing search-software vendors all say "don't buy this if you have under a few hundred items," that is unusually clean industry-consensus against the sellers' own interest. Solid foundation for R2 — Skip faceted search when the inventory is small (~under 200 items), stable, and shallow; a static list is fine.