Integrations that make your systems talk and your stock add up
Your suppliers all deliver something different: different names for the same product, different languages, different sizes, different file formats. Your webshop wants one catalogue. In between there is usually a person with a spreadsheet.
The old world
Four suppliers, thousands of products, no agreement whatsoever
The same jumper is called one thing by one supplier and something else by another. Sizes do not line up, colours have different names, texts arrive in different languages and photos come in different formats. There is no button that merges that, because there is no single field they all agree on. And every import that fails to notice simply adds the same product again.
Look at that last number. Almost six thousand different colour names, for what are in reality a few hundred colours — because one supplier writes "marine", another "navy", a third "French Navy" and a fourth delivers it in French. Retyping by hand is no option at 183,257 variants. So you choose: one supplier, and give up margin and stock.
The catalogue as it runs today
- Products in the shop
- 7,676
- Variants — every size, colour and finish separately
- 183,257
- Brands and categories
- 132 brands, 91 categories
- Colour names the suppliers use
- 5,948
Not example figures: this is the shop running on this foundation, counted on 8 August 2026.
The turn
One catalogue, with stock and price per supplier attached
The work is not in fetching data; that is half an hour of programming. The work is in the question of which product from supplier A is the same as which product from supplier B. You do not solve that with a name, but with what is hard: manufacturer article codes, barcodes, and where those are missing a fingerprint of the product photo itself.
Once that foundation is in place the rest becomes simple. Your webshop gets one product with four stock levels and four purchase prices beneath it. When an order comes in it is immediately clear who has it in stock at that moment and who is cheapest — and that changes by the day, sometimes by the hour.
Anyone can read an import file. Knowing that article 4471 from one supplier is the same as STY-88 from another: that is where the work is, and that is where your margin is.
The same connections run on into the rest: paid orders become invoices in your bookkeeping, sales on other channels draw down the same stock counter, and your bank statements fall into place because the reference was already right when the invoice was made.
What happened on our own floor
Eight thousand products, four suppliers, one catalogue
This is not an example but the job we carried out for ourselves, and it is still running.
- Counted All four supplier files read in: over eight thousand products, with an overlap nobody knew precisely.
- Measured Measured per supplier how reliable each field is. At one, 95.4 per cent of products had a usable barcode; at another, 99.4 — that decides what you may match on.
- Matched Matched on barcode and manufacturer code. Whatever was left without a code got a comparison on the product photo itself.
- Cleaned 566 duplicate products merged and 44 contaminated placeholder records removed. Duplicates split your reviews and your findability.
- Watched New files run through automatically, across 183,262 media files. Anything that cannot be matched automatically lands on a list instead of quietly sitting wrong in the shop.
That last point matters most: a connection that doubts should say so, not guess.
Why better, not just cheaper
What a standard import plug-in does not do
A plug-in reads one file from one supplier and overwrites what was there. That works until you have a second supplier — after which every import fights the last one, and nobody has an overview of what is actually in your shop.
- Stock per supplierNot one number but four — and the knowledge of who can deliver when the first says no.
- The cheapest at that momentPurchase prices move. On every order it checks who has it best right now, instead of who did last quarter.
- Languages and texts mergedOne product description in your own words, assembled from what the suppliers deliver — not the same jumper four times with four different texts.
- Preventing duplicates, not clearing them upThis is the hardest part and it never stops: every new delivery, every price update and every second supplier can create the same product again. So on every import it first checks whether it already exists — on barcode, on manufacturer code and if need be on the photo — instead of cleaning up afterwards. A duplicate product splits your reviews, splits your findability and counts your stock twice while there is only one.
- Connected on to the restWebshop, marketplaces, stock, bookkeeping and invoicing hang on the same data. Enter once, correct everywhere.
The new world
What changes about your shop
Your catalogue is no longer a snapshot but a living file. New products arrive without retyping, prices follow, and stock levels are right because they come from the source instead of from last week's export.
And you gain something you could not do before: running several suppliers side by side without it becoming unmanageable. That is not a technical win but a purchasing advantage — you are no longer dependent on whoever you happened to pick first.
Enter once. Correct everywhere. Every day again.
Getting started
What you have to do yourself
Tell us which systems you use and show us the files your suppliers deliver. We measure first how connectable they are — a matter of counting, not of opinion — and say honestly if the foundation is too thin to build on.
Frequently asked questions about connecting systems
Does this work with my webshop?
With the common webshop systems, yes; ours runs on WooCommerce. If your system has no decent way to connect, we say so before we start — and sometimes the honest conclusion is that the system is the problem.
What if my suppliers offer no integration?
Then we work with what they do deliver: a file by e-mail, a download, or if need be a page we read out. Less elegant but just as reliable, as long as there is a check that reports when the format changes.
How do you prevent duplicate products from appearing?
By asking on every import whether the product is already there, instead of blindly adding it. Barcode and manufacturer code are hard; if something is left over we compare the product photos. Whatever remains uncertain is neither matched nor created, but put on a list for a human. And it stays measurement work: we periodically count how many article numbers belong to more than one product, because that number should creep towards zero and not quietly grow.
Can I also connect to marketplaces or my bookkeeping?
Yes. Sales channels, bookkeeping packages and invoicing hang on the same foundation. That is exactly where the gain is: a sale on another channel has to lower the same stock counter, or you sell something you no longer have.
What does an integration cost?
That depends on the number of sources and on how clean your data is — the second decides most of it. Which is why we always start by measuring. We deliberately have no standard price list, because two webshops with the same number of products can differ tenfold in work.