The Catalog is the Bottleneck, Not the Platform
Most distributors don’t have an e-commerce problem. They have an e-commerce catalog management problem.
You’ve invested in the storefront. Search and faceted navigation are ready to work. But the content flowing into them arrives from hundreds of manufacturers in hundreds of different shapes: one sends a clean spreadsheet quarterly, another sends a PDF, a third sends nothing until you ask three times. Attributes are named differently across suppliers. Images are missing or low-resolution. Categories don’t line up. Specs go stale the moment a manufacturer updates a line.
So the catalog goes live incomplete. Filters return thin results. Buyers who can’t confirm a spec call the counter instead—or buy from someone whose page answered the question.
Meanwhile, the work of fixing it never ends. Every new supplier is a new onboarding project. Every product update is a manual cycle. Your team spends its time on data cleanup instead of merchandising, conversion, and growth.
What Automated Online Catalog Management Looks Like
DDS is a product data delivery platform built for industrial wholesale distribution. It automates how product content moves from your manufacturers into your e-commerce platform, ERP, and PIM—continuously, in the exact format each system requires.
Match your catalog. We map your SKUs against a database of 12.5M+ enriched products from 1,800+ manufacturer brands, so you start from coverage instead of starting from scratch.
Fill the gaps. For products that aren’t matched, DDS works directly with your manufacturers to collect content. We manage those relationships so your team doesn’t have to chase them.
Enrich and normalize. Product names, categories, and attributes are standardized across suppliers using Acadia, so “Voltage,” “volts,” and “V” become one usable filter instead of three broken ones.
Deliver on your schedule. Content lands in your systems automatically—specs, images, 360° views, videos, and documents—formatted for your platform. Daily, hourly, or on demand. Unlimited exports, no throttling.
Stay current. As manufacturers revise specs, discontinue items, or launch new products, updates flow through without a new project.
Your team moves from producing catalog data to governing it.
Faster time to market.
Launch new SKUs and updates in hours or days rather than weeks. Distributors working with DDS have launched new products up to 4× faster, and one of North America’s largest distributors cut supplier onboarding from 30 days to 3.
A catalog that actually grows.
A catalog that actually grows. With coverage across 12.5M+ enriched SKUs and 1,800+ manufacturer brands, most of your catalog is matched from the start—and the products that aren’t become an onboarding step instead of a research project. The long tail you’ve been deferring, the SKUs that never justified a manual content project on their own, finally makes it online.
Search and filters that work.
Normalized attributes and consistent categories are what make faceted navigation useful. When buyers can narrow by the specs they actually shop on, they find products instead of leaving.
Measurable commercial results.
Distributors see up to a 30% lift in digital conversion after implementing DDS content, and a 15–25% reduction in “product not as described” returns.
Capacity back.
Teams report a 60–80% reduction in time spent on manual data management and an 80%+ reduction in spreadsheet cleanup. That’s headcount you don’t have to add to scale the catalog.
Works With the Stack You Already Have
DDS is not a PIM replacement and not a rip-and-replace project. It’s the layer that keeps your existing systems supplied with content they can use.
With 475+ integrations across e-commerce platforms, ERPs, and PIMs—including Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, and Optimizely—content is delivered in the format each destination expects. If you run a PIM, DDS feeds it. If you don’t, DDS can feed your storefront directly. If you have a custom system, flexible export formats and APIs cover it.
Implementation is measured in weeks, and it starts with your e-commerce, IT, and operations teams rather than around them.
Where Your Manufacturers Fit
Catalog data management gets easier when both sides of the relationship are working from the same source. Through SYNDICATION/io, 900+ manufacturers publish approved content into the same ecosystem your CONTENT/io subscription draws from—which means the content you receive is manufacturer-approved, and new products reach you as they’re released rather than after you notice they’re missing.
For your suppliers, it removes the one-off data requests. For you, it removes the wait.
Built By Distributors, For Distributors
DDS was founded in 2014 by veterans of the distribution industry who ran into this exact problem running a distributorship of their own: a state-of-the-art webstore, hundreds of manufacturers, a full-time person transforming data, and after a year only a fraction of 400,000+ products online. It wasn’t a content problem. It was a technology problem.
Today, 400+ distributors and 475+ connected endpoints run on that conclusion.
Is DDS a PIM?
No. DDS is a product content delivery platform built for the industrial supply chain. Many customers run DDS alongside a PIM to power it with better content. Others use DDS without a PIM, or use it as a lightweight one.
Do I need a PIM to use this?
No. DDS feeds product content directly into your e-commerce platform, ERP, or custom system.
How often can we export?
Unlimited exports—daily, hourly, or on demand. No throttling and no volume fees.
What about manufacturers you don’t already cover?
DDS collects content directly from manufacturers and manages those relationships on your behalf, so new suppliers are an onboarding step rather than a research project.
How large a catalog can this handle?
The platform scales from 10,000 SKUs to over a million.