Vendor Central: Your FREE Data-Entry Portal for All Your Suppliers

In the recent roll-out with several leading retailers and distributors the Icecat PIM is promoted to all their vendors as their free Vendor Central.

The leading Chinese and Polish marketplaces Aliexpress and Allegro. Carrefour, the Spanish hypermarket Alcampo, the leading European IT distributor EET. Lastly, the Turkish retail giant Teknosa and Worten Portugal’s leading consumer electronics giant. Hundreds of local brand reps have since then registered at Icecat PIM to add missing product content, such as marketing texts and localized PDFs. More and more leading retailers and distributors are embracing this approach.

Moreover, Icecat PIM, the editorial back office of Icecat, is already in use by 100s of internal and external editors, including specialized or generic brand reps, often as part of an Open Icecat agreement.

Free Vendor Central

So what’s new? Now, the Icecat PIM is also available as a free-of-charge Vendor Central for our 1000s of Full Icecat (web) retail clients, such as Teknosa, that have already a seamlessly working integration with the Icecat data pool. The main benefit for such retail clients and their suppliers is that they can cost-effectively optimize the buying experience of customers, by completing their product content with all data that helps a customer to make an informed buying decision. In addition, the connected retailer is committed to transparently publish all the requested additional content on its website. Typically, localized images and PDFs are added. Better product content leads to improved sales and conversion. Undescribed products do not sell as they are often excluded from retailer catalogs.

So, what are the key benefits:

• free-of-charge Vendor Central for a retailer that has already a working Full Icecat integration (preferably, using XML or JSON)
• key retailer has committed to publish the additional vendor data on its websites, preferably near real-time or in daily updates
• the key retailer can use Icecat as it’s own PIM Cloud as well, to create a seamless workflow
• brand reps only need to add missing product content or missing digital assets, such as extra product images and PDFs, in the PIM back-office
• easy-to-use editorial backoffice, stress tested and in use by 100s of users already
• a generic standardized taxonomy, maintained by Icecat, to allow product comparison by consumers
• data health and brand rank statistics: research shows the impact.

What the standard Free Vendor Central does not include?

• API integrations with manufacturer databases
• Support of brand-specific taxonomies
• Open Icecat sponsorship by brands to allow free use of product content by any retail partner of the brand
• Brand-driven Digital Rights Management (DRM) for digital assets or private catalogs for authorized partners only
• A stand-alone multi-source PIM environment such as Iceshop PIM or Syndy’s PIM for brand/retailer template transformations

All interested parties that want to activate their own Free Vendor Central, to improve their brands’ product content together with their partners, then don’t hesitate to contact us: