What is an FPN?

A real door gasket in the parts catalog today. The manufacturer numbers it one way, the aftermarket brand another — and every listing renders those differently. The FPN is the one name that never moves.

Every alias converges on one page in the parts catalog, where the prices and fitment for that one physical gasket live together.

Replacement parts live in a messier world than appliances. The same door gasket sells under the manufacturer’s number, a distributor’s number, and half a dozen marketplace listings — and none of those agree. The FPN cuts through it the same way the FIN does for appliances: one permanent Fridge.com identity per physical part, so prices and fitment information aggregate under one anchor in the parts catalog.

The boundary is strict by design. An appliance carries a FIN and never an FPN; a part carries an FPN and never a FIN. Even accessories for a filter — a filter cap, a filter housing, an ice-maker line installation kit — are parts, because you buy them to repair or install, not to replace on a schedule.

An FPN is minted when a part enters the catalog and never changes afterwards — not when the title is cleaned up, not when the brand is corrected, not when a retailer relists it. If a part is ever removed, its number is retired, never reused. That permanence is what makes the identifier safe to cite: an FPN in a bookmark, a spreadsheet, or an AI assistant’s answer keeps meaning the same physical part.

A filter is not a part. Water, air, inline and ice-machine filters are consumables with their own identifier — the FFN — and their own filter catalog. The four Fridge.com systems are always named in the same order: FIN, FPN, FFN, FIS — three permanent identifiers, then one score.