The catalogue

The catalogue is what makes comparison possible. It has two layers: master products that describe what something is, and offers that say who sells it, at what price.

Master products

One master product per real-world item, described by its category's attributes. For a circuit breaker these are poles, rating, curve and breaking capacity; for cable, cores and cross-section. Each category has a schema listing which attributes are required.

Because every supplier's offer points at the same master product, a buyer's line "MCB 32A" can be priced across every supplier at once.

Offers

An offer is one supplier's terms for one master product: price, minimum quantity, stock or lead time, and which price list it belongs to. Offers are:

• Live when buyers can order them,
• On request when the supplier wants to confirm availability first,
• Paused when temporarily withdrawn.

An offer is stale when the supplier hasn't confirmed it in a week. Stale offers are flagged to buyers and the supplier.

Keeping it clean

Platform catalogue staff look after the master data:

• Merge queue. When a supplier submits a product that looks like one that already exists, staff compare the two and merge them, keep them separate, or ask for more information. Merged products move their offers to the surviving one.
• New products. Suppliers can submit products the catalogue lacks, with the required attributes and a datasheet. Staff review them before they go live.
• Data quality. Completeness, stale offers and missing datasheets per category and per supplier. Staff send fix requests to suppliers and follow them up.
• Schemas. Changing a category's attributes is a platform setting and needs a second admin's approval.