Supplier catalog into commerce
The shops are not named here.
A reseller needed a supplier’s catalog in their own store. The only durable source was the supplier’s public site. There was no CSV, no feed, and no API they could depend on. Copying by hand was not realistic. The job was not “a scraper.” It was to get the catalog in, in the right shape, with a way to check it first.
Situation
The same item often lived at more than one address. The destination shop wants one product with variants, not a pile of duplicates. Titles, options, prices, images, and tags had to land in the reseller’s structure — draft on the way in, stock not trusted from a raw dump.
Coverage, grouping, and trust had to hold at the same time. Access had to stay polite and inside what the source site allows. Text and images only where the reseller agreement allows them.
What I built
A repeatable pipeline, not a one-off script:
- Discover the URL set from what the source site itself publishes
- Fetch with limits, checkpoints, and a way to resume
- Parse, then merge into a single key per logical product — with rules the client can change when two pages are the same item or not
- Validate before export: errors vs warnings, so bad rows do not hide in a spreadsheet
- Replay saved pages offline so later fixes do not lean on the live source
- Export standard import files the merchant can open, sort, and spot-check
- Dry-run on a development store, then a careful production import
Around that: field maps, a dry-run checklist, and notes on what was a data fix vs a conscious trade-off. Optional storefront helpers for navigation after the catalog was in. Later, a path to refresh price and stock without running a full collect every time.
Outcome
They have a reviewable catalog in their shop and a method they can run again when the source changes. It is not an always-on magic sync sold as finished — it is a migration they can audit, plus a refresh path. I am not naming either business here.
What I cannot show yet
The shop names, the source site, the import files, and any screenshot of the catalog. Permission first, then artifacts.