A central hub that holds all your product information in one place: variants, attributes, photos, datasheets, translations, certificates and marketplace mappings. From there, everything flows at the push of a button to your webshop, Bol, Amazon, dealers and print. Custom built around your catalogue, integrated with your ERP and DAM, and in your own taxonomy.
A PIM portal — Product Information Management — is the single source of truth for everything you know and want to communicate about your products. Specifications, variants, colours, sizes, materials, weights, translations, marketing copy, certificates, photos, videos, technical datasheets and marketplace attribute mappings all come together in one place and flow from there, in a structured way, to every channel you serve. For wholesalers, manufacturers and retailers with hundreds to hundreds of thousands of items, that is the difference between a team that experiences data maintenance as a daily backlog and a team that can confidently set up new product launches, language markets and marketplaces.
Without a PIM, product information is scattered across Excel files, an ERP field never intended for marketing copy, a ZIP of photos on a network drive and a handful of fields manually entered directly into Magento or Shopware. Every new product launch then costs disproportionate effort, and every new language market or marketplace means going back to purchasing for data you thought you already had. A PIM portal addresses this by recording, per product record, which attributes are mandatory for which channel, which translation is missing where and which asset is not yet available — visible in a dashboard your product managers and content team use every day.
We have been building product and data platforms for wholesalers, manufacturers and retailers since 2015. This type of platform often overlaps with a B2B e-commerce portal and a dealer portal; the PIM sits beneath both as the data layer. For compliance around the Digital Product Passport and sustainability data, see also DPP software, and for the broader integration architecture, see integrations.
Which type of platform fits depends on the size of your range, the number of channels, languages and marketplaces you serve, and how deeply the portal needs to be embedded in your existing ERP, DAM and webshop. In the first conversation, we advise which option makes sense for your situation: a custom portal, an implementation of Akeneo or Pimcore with additional custom modules, or a combination.
A structured portal for several thousand SKUs, with variants, core attributes, product photos and multichannel output to one or two channels – typically your own webshop plus one marketplace. Suited to wholesalers and manufacturers who currently work in Excel and want a scalable successor without an enterprise budget.
For retail and e-commerce with multiple language markets and marketplaces: a workflow with approval steps, translation management, channel-specific attribute mappings to Bol, Amazon, Otto, Kaufland and Zalando, plus an integrated DAM for product photos, lifestyle shots and videos. Includes integrations with your order management system and webshop.
A mission-critical PIM with deep integrations into your ERP and MES, industry standards (GS1, ETIM, 2BA, ECLASS), Digital Product Passport fields, multi-tenant theming for different brands and business units, and AI attribute completion that automatically fills gaps in product data based on datasheets and existing descriptions.
A production-ready PIM portal plus everything around it, so you can manage it yourself, add new channels and expand as your range and language markets grow.
Four patterns in which a Product Information Management portal noticeably takes work off your hands – for your product managers, your content team and your channel managers. If you recognise one, a conversation is usually worth the time.
Your product managers keep specifications, colours, sizes, marketing copy and marketplace attributes in spreadsheets that are uploaded quarterly to the webshop or sent to marketplaces via FTP. Versions get mixed up, errors creep in, changing an attribute for one channel unintentionally affects another, and nobody has an overview of who last changed what.
You want to sell on a new marketplace — Amazon, Bol, Otto, Kaufland, Zalando or MediaMarkt — but their mandatory attribute lists go beyond what you currently record. Category-specific size charts, material composition, energy labels, harmonised codes: your buyer has to go back to the supplier by hand to fetch data you once had to hand but never properly recorded.
For each market you need marketing copy, product names, keywords and compliance text in a different language. Translations currently live in loose documents that get merged with each release, and you have no overview of which products are still missing a language. Or worse: all translations go through a single external party you have to call for every small change.
Product photos sit on a network drive, lifestyle shots in a Dropbox, datasheets as separate PDFs. Your webshop often links to an older version, marketplaces have their own recent version, and the print catalogue pulls from yet another source. That leaves you exposed to compliance issues around labelling claims.
A conversation in which we establish which channels the portal must serve — your own webshop, marketplaces, dealers, print, partner feeds — which ERP and DAM systems sit around it, and what your product categories, variants and attributes look like today. At the end you have a first outline of the scope and a sense of where we start.
Workshops with your product managers, content team, purchasing and marketing, plus short interviews with a cross-section of end users — a product manager launching new lines, a data steward monitoring quality, a marketer filling marketplaces. What do they do now, where do they get stuck, what do they expect from the portal? At the end: data model, screen flow and a plan per module.
A working build every two weeks. Your team tests along, and a pilot category from your catalogue runs in parallel. We start with the data model and the first channel output — usually your own webshop — and expand in subsequent sprints with variants, translations, marketplaces, DAM and AI enrichment. This way you see value early and can steer the scope every sprint.
We roll out in phases across your full range, run onboarding sessions, and provide ongoing management for security, marketplace API changes, ERP integrations and development of new modules. As you add channels, languages and marketplaces, the portal keeps pace.
A PIM portal is built from a set of recognisable building blocks. Which ones you need depends on your assortment, channel mix and sector, but the following modules feature in almost every project — sometimes as the core, sometimes as an extension in a second phase once the foundation is running.
A flexible data model with product families, master products, variants on axis level (colour, size, material), bundles and kits. A dedicated attribute set per category, so a TV asks for different fields than a sofa, and both differ from a screw. Versioning per record and an audit trail for every change, so you can always see who changed what and when.
A reusable library of attributes — number, text, enumeration, measurement with unit, date, asset reference — with rules for mandatory fields per channel. An attribute on the product page that is required for Bol may be optional for your own webshop; a weight field may be in kilograms but mandatory in pounds for Amazon. Validations keep bad data out of the portal.
Configurable per attribute as to whether it is language-dependent. Product names, descriptions, marketing copy, material descriptions and warranty text, all with separate language variants and a built-in overview of what is still missing per language. Integrations with DeepL, Google Translate or a translation agency for first-pass translations, with human approval steps before publication.
An integrated DAM for product photos, lifestyle shots, videos, datasheets, user manuals and certificates. Each asset carries metadata, a validity period and a rights overview, plus automatic image derivatives for different channels: a 4K shot for your own website, a compressed version for marketplaces, a square crop for social media. Version control means outdated photos can be replaced without breaking links.
A workflow configurable per channel and per product category: a product manager writes, a data steward checks, marketing approves commercial copy, and compliance approves label claims. Only once every step is green does the portal publish to the relevant channel. Statuses are visible on a dashboard, so everyone can see what is waiting on whom.
For each output channel (your own webshop, Bol, Amazon, Otto, Kaufland, MediaMarkt, partner feeds, print catalogue), we build a dedicated mapping from your internal attributes to that channel's attribute structure. This includes category mapping (your category to the marketplace category), price overrides and region-specific compliance text. Publication is push or pull, with retry logic in case of API outages.
For sectors with industry classifications, such as building services, construction, electronics, food and automotive, we link your product data to GS1 GDSN, ETIM, 2BA, ECLASS or your own taxonomy. To prepare for the European Digital Product Passport obligation (expected via ESPR from 2027), we set up the DPP fields in advance: origin, materials, recyclability, repairability and compliance documents. See also our page on DPP software.
For catalogues with thousands of items and incomplete attributes, we deploy an AI layer that, based on datasheets, existing descriptions and competitor pages, suggests missing attributes (size, material, weight, category, keywords), with a confidence score and human approval before publication. See also our page on AI development for our approach.
Insight into attribute completeness per channel, translation coverage per language market, asset currency, workflow turnaround times and publication status per marketplace. Dashboards for your product managers and data stewards, plus self-service reporting for the marketing team who manage completeness per channel. Exportable to Power BI, Tableau or Looker.
With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.
Explore OneDayBuild →The terminology differs by sector: some wholesalers call it a "product database", manufacturers "specification management", and retail a "content hub" or "product DAM", but the underlying patterns are similar. In building services and construction, this often means deep ETIM and 2BA integrations, many categorical attributes per product line, and certificates that must be passed on to quote modules. In fashion and electronics, seasonal collections, variant explosion (colour × size × style) and marketplace attribute mappings play a bigger role. For manufacturers and private-label producers, the focus is often on brand asset management, multi-tenant theming per customer brand, and a separate approval flow per brand.
In building services and construction, we work with wholesalers who supply ETIM-classified products to contractors and rely on 2BA for the Dutch installation market. In fashion and sport, deep variant flows (colour × size × fit) are added, along with seasonal collections that rotate quarterly. In food and consumer goods, allergen and nutritional data are key, along with GS1 GDSN for supplier synchronisation. In electronics, energy labels and RoHS data are mandatory. For automotive parts, OEM cross-references, vehicle fitment and TecDoc are central.
We choose the right architecture case by case. For one client, an implementation of Akeneo or Pimcore with additional custom modules fits; for another, a fully custom PIM makes more sense because the standard package isn't flexible enough for their explosion of categories. We always advise based on what your team already runs and what your maintenance partner supports, not on a preferred stack. For our broader approach to integration, see our page on integrations.
We build PIM portals as modern web applications on a stack that works in virtually any enterprise environment and stays maintainable. Front end on React, Vue or Next.js with TypeScript; back end on Node.js, Python (Django or FastAPI) or .NET, depending on what your own IT team knows. For the data layer, we typically combine PostgreSQL with MongoDB for flexible attribute sets, plus a vector database (pgvector, Weaviate, Qdrant) for semantic search or AI enrichment. For asynchronous publishing to marketplaces, we use a message queue (RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, Kafka) so that a slow marketplace API doesn't hold up your product managers.
On the ERP side, we integrate with SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business One, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Exact Online, Exact Globe, AFAS Profit, Unit4 or a proprietary ERP. For digital assets, we work with Bynder, Brandfolder, Cloudinary or a proprietary DAM. For webshops, with Shopify, Shopware, Magento (Adobe Commerce), BigCommerce, Sana Commerce or a headless front end on Next.js or Nuxt. For marketplaces, with the native APIs of Bol, Amazon SP-API, Otto, Kaufland, Mediamarkt and Zalando, or via an aggregator such as ChannelEngine or EffectConnect. For industry standards, with GS1-GDSN, ETIM, 2BA, ECLASS and TecDoc.
Compliance is not an afterthought for PIM platforms. The European ESPR regulation requires a Digital Product Passport for a growing number of product categories, starting with batteries and extending to textiles, electronics and furniture. For industry compliance (energy labels, RoHS, REACH, CLP for chemicals, allergens for food), we build validation into the data model, so that publishing to a channel automatically fails if mandatory compliance fields are missing. For the wider context, see our page on AI development for the attribute enrichment side.
If your PIM feeds a webshop on CloudSuite, you decide in advance which system owns which field. How we build that integration is covered on building a CloudSuite integration.
What clients usually want to know before we start.
A no-obligation introductory conversation of half an hour. We listen to your catalogue structure, your channel mix and the pain points that currently cost you the most time, ask sharp questions, and give direction you can use — even if we turn out not to be the right partner. For the wider context of our approach, you may also want to look at our software development page or the overview of integrations.
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