Every distributor we meet is convinced their product data is the worst. And even more frustratingly, they believe they can’t do anything about it until their suppliers start cooperating.
The logic seems sound: If the data problem starts upstream with manufacturers, the solution should start there too. So that means we should build a portal where suppliers can submit structured product information, enforce a schema and the catalog practically builds itself.
It’s a compelling idea. It’s also the reason thousands of SKUs sit unpublished at any given time.
The Portal Nobody Logs Into: Why?
A mid-market distributor carries products from hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of manufacturers. Each of those manufacturers sells through dozens of distribution partners, each of which has its own portal, attribute requirements and formatting rules.
From the manufacturer’s perspective, your portal is one of many. They already have their product information in their own format inside their own systems, so reformatting and uploading it into each individual distributor’s portal is not a priority. That means every follow-up email asking them to complete their submission is a small withdrawal from the relationship.
So what do they send instead? A price list. A PDF spec sheet. Maybe a spreadsheet export from their own system. In other words, the same thing they’ve always sent. And that’s not a failure of the relationship; it’s the dynamic working as it naturally does.
This means that distributors who have invested in supplier portals report the same outcome: single-digit adoption.
And every week that product pages sit with only a part number and no description, specs or images is a week of lost conversions.
The Real Cost of Waiting
According to McKinsey’s 2024 B2B Pulse Survey, ecommerce has overtaken in-person sales as the top B2B revenue-generating channel, with 34% of all B2B sales now flowing through digital. Additionally, Gartner’s 2025 Sales Survey found that 61% of B2B buyers now prefer an entirely rep-free buying experience.
Takeaway: Your product pages aren’t supplementing your sales team; for a growing majority of buyers, they are the sales team.
And when those pages are sparse, buyers leave. Benchmark found that nearly 8 in 10 shoppers choose not to buy products because of poor or missing product content, which means revenue walks out the door every day your catalog sits incomplete.
But many distributors stay stuck because they believe a prerequisite exists: clean, structured data from suppliers must come first, then the PIM, then the product pages — a sequence that can take years. Some teams have been “waiting on the portal” for three or four years with nothing to show for it.
So the question worth asking: What if the prerequisite is wrong?
A Different Starting Point: Meeting Suppliers Where They Are
A growing number of distributors are flipping the order. Instead of waiting for suppliers to send structured data, they’re starting with data that already exists and enriching it to the point where it’s ready to publish.
The key insight: This isn’t about cutting suppliers out of the process. It’s about meeting them where they are and building on what they already give you.
The raw material is already there. Price lists contain part numbers, basic descriptions and category information. Manufacturer websites have specs, images and technical documentation. Industry databases have cross-references and compatibility data.
None of it is structured the way you need it, but all of it is usable. So now what?
AI-powered enrichment tools can take that raw material and transform it into structured product content: full descriptions, normalized specs, mapped attributes and SEO-ready copy. This means that what used to require months of manual effort per product line can happen in days.
The workflow looks like this:
- Accept data as it arrives. A supplier sends a price list or spec sheet in whatever format they use. No portal required. No reformatting demanded.
- Enrich it automatically. AI aggregates information from the supplier’s submission, public sources, manufacturer sites and industry databases to build out complete product records, filling in missing attributes, normalizing values and generating descriptions.
- Load it into your PIM. Enriched data flows into your product information management system as structured, schema-compliant records. Readiness scoring tells you exactly what’s complete, what needs review and what’s ready to publish.
- Validate and publish. Quality rules catch errors. Human reviewers approve the content. Products go live on your site, your marketplace listings and any other channel.
Suppliers keep working the way they always have. The catalog gets better anyway.
What Changes for The Business
When distributors stop gating their catalog strategy on supplier portal adoption, several things happen at once.
The backlog starts moving. Instead of a years-long data cleanup project, product content improves in weeks. Teams can prioritize by revenue impact: Start with the highest-margin or highest-traffic product lines and work outward.
The PIM earns its ROI faster. A PIM is most valuable when it has good data in it. Distributors who load sparse records into a PIM and then wait for suppliers to fill in the gaps end up with expensive infrastructure sitting half-empty. Enriching data before or as it enters the PIM means the system delivers value from day one.
The supplier portal becomes optional. If a manufacturer wants to submit structured data through a portal, that’s a win. But the portal is no longer a prerequisite for having a functioning catalog. Instead, it’s a nice-to-have for incremental improvement versus being a blocker.
Your suppliers notice. When you stop asking manufacturers to log into portals and reformat data and instead take what they already send and turn it into rich, accurate product pages, the relationship changes. You go from being the channel partner who nags about compliance to the one who makes their products look great without adding to their workload.
The distributor product data problem is real, but it’s a workflow problem, not a compliance problem. Trying to get hundreds of manufacturers to change how they share data is an adoption challenge that most distributors will never win and puts friction at the center of a relationship that should be collaborative.
The Paradigm Shift
Accepting data in whatever form it exists and enriching it intelligently removes that friction. It’s better for your catalog and customers, plus the manufacturers who chose you as a channel partner.
The stakes keep rising. Sana Commerce’s 2025 B2B Buyer Report found that 75% of B2B buyers would switch suppliers for a better online buying experience. The distributors who move first will have richer catalogs, better search rankings and higher conversion rates while their competitors are still waiting on the portal.
Which group would you want to fall into?
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