Facets are independent, mutually exclusive attributes of content that together describe an entire domain, think of an outdoor gear catalog described simultaneously by activity, brand, price range, and season, where each of those is a separate facet a shopper can filter by independently. Facet analysis is an eight-step process: collect a representative content sample, briefly describe each item, compile a list of indexable concepts and preferred terms, decompose any compound concepts into simpler parts, create and refine the facets themselves, create and refine the ordered term lists within each facet, organize everything into a coherent classification scheme, and finally revise the content to conform to it.
Faceted classification earns its complexity in specific situations: new or emerging domains without an established vocabulary, interdisciplinary fields where different experts bring different perspectives, and large or complex information spaces where a single hierarchy, even a polyhierarchy, can't flexibly express items that genuinely belong along several independent dimensions at once.
A strict hierarchy asks "where does this belong?" as if there's one right answer. Faceted classification asks "what are all the true things about this?" and lets someone find it along whichever one they happen to be thinking about.
Keeping the taxonomy and adding independent facets is the correct approach. Use case, season, skill level, and brand are each legitimate, independent dimensions along which a shopper might approach the same catalog, exactly the situation faceted classification is built for. Trying to force all of these combinations into a deep polyhierarchy would create an unwieldy, hard-to-maintain structure, since a single tent might then need to sit under dozens of category combinations rather than being described once, along several independent facets, and filtered dynamically.
This is a common and effective real-world pattern the source material describes directly: for large product catalogs, combining a hierarchical taxonomy as the overarching structure with subordinate facets layered on top is often the most powerful approach, the taxonomy still gives the catalog its primary organizing structure, while facets let shoppers cut across it from whatever angle matches their actual need.Even with facets added, the product-type taxonomy alone remains the right tool for something like generating the site's primary top-level navigation menu, a shopper landing on the homepage still benefits from a simple, stable "Tents / Boots / Backpacks" structure to orient themselves, even though the deeper filtering experience within each category benefits from facets once they've committed to browsing a specific product type.
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Designs facet dimensions and values so the same content can be found along multiple meaningful paths.