One Year Icecat Free Vendor Central: more than 600 brands, 30K products, and 30 retailers included

Since the launch of Icecat Free Vendor Central, one year ago, we notice great adoption. In short, for this Icecat PIM cloud, there are more than 600 brand editors registered. Of which 500 actively utilize the data-entry interface. Furthermore, these brand editors took care of the creation of more than 30,000 unique product data-sheets themselves. And, last but not least, a leading group of 30 key retailers and distributors committed to directly ingesting the output of Vendor Central into their own e-commerce environments.

Why retailers want Free Vendor Central?

Since its launch, many of our key retail partners rapidly adopt the Icecat Free Vendor Central. Why? In short, the Vendor Central is their online PIM and data-in interface towards their supplier-brands. Because it reduces the need to invest in a costly supplier portal themselves to zero. Via Vendor Central, a retailer’s vendors can directly upload product data into the Icecat database. It is free of charge, so there are no thresholds for vendors either. Furthermore, the interface offers near real-time solutions in data sharing, updating, and optimizing product data on the websites of a brand’s retail partners. Apart from being very efficient, it is also very effective in influencing conversion rates in online sales. More complete product data-sheets help buyers to make better buying decisions. It’s not more than logical that data entry via Vendor Central is now a part of the common sales and purchase processes.

Benefits of Free Vendor Central?

What’s in it for brand owners?

Firstly, increased sales by reducing the time to market for new products. In an optimal situation, it takes just 30 minutes before a new product data-sheet is activated within the committed retail network. And within 24 to 72 hours, all other Full Icecat retail partners receive and process the new product content as well. The adoption and speed depend on the type of connection and setup done by the respective retail partner.

Saved costs by reducing human resource allocation on product activation with your retail partners. Instead of uploading data one by one data per retailer, a single data entry point facilitates all your partners at once. In all required languages. Whether they are working with Icecat already or not. This reduces the time spent on data processing considerably.

Reduced after-sales costs by offering data consistency and with lower error rates. Provide one base dataset to all your partners. This includes the same set of images, specifications, and messaging. In case of errors, it is easy to update this single source of truth. It benefits product recognition over multiple sales channels. On top of this, it’s still possible to add retailer-specific messaging.

Improved sales conversion by enriching product messaging. Vendor Central allows you to tweak and optimize the data to influence your conversion rates. For example, by changing images, improving marketing messaging, or adding an inspiring video. You can play with the product data to find the right tone of voice that leads to optimal conversion and copy this to your other products.

Have control over the data published. Vendor Central puts you as a brand owner in control of your product communication and your channel. Even if the final editorial composition still depends on your partners’ design choices, the foundation is offered by you and experience learns that more than 80% of data is accepted without change.

How does it work for brands?

To visualize the workflow for a brand invited by a Vendor Central partner:

1. Brand registration
2. Brand authorization and validation by Icecat
3. Approval notification and Brand/Category assignment to the brand user account
4. Data entry by brands: Quality level Supplier
5. Validation of data by the Icecat Quality Assurance processes
6. Data acceptance: quality level “Icecat”
7. Syndication of data within the Full Icecat syndication network
8. Data acceptance by Vendor Central channel partners (within 30 minutes*)
9. Data acceptance by other Full Icecat partners (within 24 – 72 hours *)

*depending on the type of connection and setup done by the retail partner. The refresh rate and adoption level of data assets can be different per retail partner.