How to get your suppliers’ catalogues onto your website automatically

Picture a dealer with 5,000 lines from six suppliers: seating, desking and storage from three furniture manufacturers, plus a wholesaler’s stationery, janitorial and catering ranges. Every line needs a title, a description, images, a brand, a category, specifications, a cost and a selling price. Type them in at six minutes a product (our assumption, and a generous one once images and finishes are involved) and that is 500 hours, or about thirteen weeks of one person doing nothing else. Then the first supplier changes its prices and a chunk of it is wrong.

This guide covers the five real routes in the UK: what each gives you, how often it updates, who pays for the data and what tends to break, then what a store that stays synced with its suppliers does differently. Disclosure: we build Orbit Commerce, which has its own way of doing this, so we have a stake in the answer. Every outside fact has a link and the date we checked it.

What does getting a supplier catalogue online actually involve?

Four layers of data, changing at different speeds.

• Content. Titles, descriptions, images, specifications, dimensions, brochures. Changes a few times a year.
• Structure. Brand, category, variants (a chair in six fabrics with two arm options), barcodes and manufacturer part numbers. Changes when ranges launch or retire.
• Price. The supplier’s cost or list price, and the selling price you work out from it. Changes at least once a year, sometimes overnight.
• Stock. What the supplier can ship, and when. Changes every day.

Most routes handle the first two well and leave price and stock to you. That is where dealer websites go stale.

How do I add wholesaler products to my website?

There are five routes in practice. Most dealers end up using two or three at once: a feed or connection for the big ranges, a spreadsheet import for a mid-sized supplier, and hand entry for bespoke lines.

1. Wholesaler data files and dealer portals

The big office products wholesalers publish product data for their resellers. VOW has a Data and Content registration with eBasic, ePremium and API levels, delivered by FTP, through your back-office software provider or by API, and the form asks which webstore provider you use (vowwholesale.co.uk, checked 29 October 2026). The page says the data is there “to power search functionality in your back office systems” and publishes no price, so ask your account manager what each level includes and costs.

VOW also runs OPinfo.net, a browse-only catalogue that shows recommended retail prices and tells visitors everything on it is “available to order from your local office supplies provider” (opinfo.net, checked 29 October 2026). Useful if you have no site at all, but your customer cannot buy from you on it.

Furniture manufacturers vary more: some run a dealer portal with image packs and price lists, others send a spreadsheet and a folder of photos. Either way, a data file is raw material. Something still has to load it, map it to your categories, price it and keep it current. Sources also move: when evo agreed for VOW to acquire the trade and stock of Exertis Supplies in January 2026 (printinthechannel.co.uk, checked 29 October 2026), any dealer site built on Exertis Supplies data had a re-pointing job to do.

2. Content services such as FusionPlus

ECI’s FusionPlus sits between suppliers and dealer software, and it is built for the supplier side: ECI describes it as a “product content service that enriches supplier data and feeds over 1,000 dealer webstores”, with a database of over 2 million SKUs, multiple descriptions, an industry category structure with filterable attributes, and images, documents and videos (ecisolutions.com, checked 29 October 2026). The supplier’s file goes out through ECI’s software house relationships and is “collected by them every evening via our API” (ecisolutions.com, checked 29 October 2026).

That is rich content refreshed nightly, with two catches. You reach it through a software provider that collects the files, and ECI publishes no price, so your cost depends on that provider. And it is content: your buy prices still come from your wholesaler or ERP, and your selling prices from whatever your webstore does with them.

3. Supplier connections built into the platform

Some ecommerce platforms connect to suppliers themselves, so ranges arrive in the store with no file in between. Heart Systems, which sells back-office software and webstores to office dealers, says feeds are “automatically imported from numerous office furniture suppliers in the UK and Ireland” into its back office and the dealer’s online store; it publishes no price and books demos by phone (heartsystems.co.uk, checked 29 October 2026). In home furniture, RetailSystem’s WebReadyCatalog can “publish entire supplier product ranges” to a retailer’s site “at the click of a button”, with regular updates from the supplier, for its WebSystem Shopify clients only, price on request (thefurnitureshows.com, checked 29 October 2026).

The strength is that content, price and stock can all flow. The limit is that you only get the suppliers that platform has connected, so check your top five suppliers are on the list before anything else. Orbit works this way too; more on that below.

4. CSV import with a column mapper

The supplier sends a spreadsheet, your platform’s importer reads it, and you match their columns (“Prod Desc Long”, “RRP ex”) to your fields. It costs nothing but time and suits a one-off load of a few hundred lines. The trouble starts on the second import. If SKUs or URLs changed, you get duplicates. Selling prices have to be worked out in the sheet before upload. Images must be public links, not attachments. And between imports the data is a snapshot that is already ageing.

5. Manual entry

Right for bespoke items, made-to-order boardroom tables and your own services such as installation. Wrong for anything on a price list: at our six-minute assumption, 300 lines is 30 hours, out of date at the first price change.

How do the options compare?

What usually goes wrong?

• Stale prices. The supplier’s increase lands, the website still shows last year’s price, and you sell at a loss or make an awkward call. Cost changes need a path into your selling prices; turning cost into price is its own subject, covered in markup vs margin for trade price lists.
• Missing or thin images. One small photo of the black version when the chair comes in eight fabrics. Ask for per-finish images before you load anything.
• Duplicate products. Two suppliers carrying the same brand, or a re-import that matches nothing, gives you two of everything and splits your search ranking. Match on manufacturer part number or barcode, never on title.
• Category mess. Six suppliers, six category trees. Map theirs onto yours, or customers find “Task Chairs”, “Operator Seating” and “Office Chairs” side by side.
• Overwritten edits. You rewrite a description for search and the next sync puts the supplier’s back. Decide field by field what the supplier owns and what you own.
• Discontinued lines still on sale. The worst one, because a customer pays for something that no longer exists.

Barcodes and part numbers matter twice: once for matching, and again when you send the catalogue on to Google Shopping, which leans on GTIN, MPN and brand. What a product feed actually is covers that outbound side.

What does a synced, pre-stocked store do differently?

It treats the supplier as a running source, not a one-off import. Here is how Orbit does it; hold any platform to the same points.

1. Connect. In Suppliers you find an approved supplier in the directory, or search every supplier catalogue on Orbit at once for a product, and connect.
2. Pick. Tick the products you want. They import in the background with images, variants, brand, category and specifications, and you can map the supplier’s brands and categories onto your own.
3. Price. Selling prices come from your pricing rules: a percentage markup, a percentage margin or a fixed amount, rounded to .99, .95 or whole pounds, and matched by brand, category or cost band. Rules are checked top to bottom and the first match wins, so a rule for one brand can sit above your catch-all.
4. Stay in sync. Stock syncs from the supplier. Cost and content changes arrive in an Updates inbox showing old and new figures, or can be set to be accepted automatically, in which case a new cost runs back through your rules. A price you set by hand is left alone.
5. Grow. New products the supplier publishes wait in Updates for you to accept. The connection can be set to add them automatically instead; that switch is off until you turn it on.

The details that head off the problems above: a “keep my edits” switch so the supplier’s next update does not undo your copy, sync switches field by field, a product the supplier retires is archived in your store rather than deleted, and a change to a product’s variant structure always waits for your review. When an order is paid, Orbit raises one purchase order per supplier, left as a draft for you to check or sent straight to the supplier, and tracking flows back to your customer’s order. Orbit does not move money between you and the supplier. The full flow is on dropshipping and supplier connections, and how it fits a furniture dealer is on Orbit for office furniture dealers.

The honest limit: this works for suppliers connected on Orbit. If one of yours is not, you can invite them from the dashboard, and they can read what is involved on Orbit for suppliers. Meanwhile the product importer takes Shopify and WooCommerce CSVs as they are and any other spreadsheet through a column mapper, and the Import/Export plugin can run scheduled imports from a URL, FTP or SFTP. A file imported that way carries its own prices, so work them out in the file. Supplier connections are on every plan, from Solo at £25 a month ex VAT (£19 billed yearly), after a 14-day free trial: see pricing.

What should I ask my supplier before connecting their catalogue?

1. How do you deliver product data? A file, FTP, an API, a content service, or a connection on a platform? How many products are in it?
2. How often does it update, and does it include stock? Stock daily and content monthly is a very different thing from one spreadsheet a year.
3. Which price is in it? List, trade, or my net price after discount, and is it ex VAT? Get your discount terms in writing, brand by brand.
4. What images do you have? How many per product, what resolution (ask for at least 1,200 pixels on the long side), one per finish, and can I use them on Google Shopping and marketplaces?
5. Do products carry barcodes and manufacturer part numbers?
6. How are variants structured? One product with fabric and frame options, or a separate code for every combination?
7. How will you tell me about price changes and discontinued lines, and with how much notice?
8. Do you deliver direct to my customer, and what does that cost per zone or per item? If they do, read office furniture dropshipping in the UK.
9. Is there a charge for the data, and can I keep it if I change platform?

For the wider office trade, from stationery wholesalers to furniture manufacturers, see Orbit for the office industry.

Questions people ask about supplier catalogues

What is a supplier product feed?

A file or connection, published by a supplier or wholesaler, that carries product data to its resellers: titles, descriptions, images, categories and codes, and sometimes prices and stock. The feed you send to Google Shopping is the same idea pointing the other way.

Who pays for supplier product data?

It varies. VOW and ECI publish no prices for their data services, FusionPlus reaches dealers through their software provider, a spreadsheet costs nothing but time, and on Orbit supplier connections are included in every plan.

How often should supplier prices and stock update on my website?

Stock as often as the supplier can send it, and daily at the least. Content when it changes. Prices whenever the supplier changes them, through a review step or rules you trust to apply them.