Orgill hits the million-item mark
Orgill announced the number of individual items within its shareable product information database grew to more than one million during the fourth quarter of 2021.
The Collierville, Tenn.-based hardware distributor reported it had reached this significant milestone in its efforts to help independent retailers enhance their e-commerce capabilities.
“Nearly a decade ago, we realized that independent retailers would need access to all the product data, images and information for the products they carry to populate their e-commerce engines. And, if they were going to properly represent their store brands, this would also include products that Orgill may not supply,” said Boyden Moore, Orgill president and CEO.
To make this amount of data easily accessible to retailers who subscribe to the service, Orgill said it houses the information in a Product Information Management (PIM) system.
Referred to as the “Orgill Industry PIM,” this software makes it easy for users to find and access the information they need.
Orgill’s Industry PIM has product data, images and information across four different types of items: Orgill warehouse products, Orgill dropship products, products not sold through Orgill and commodity wood products.
“When you look at the breakdown of the more than one million items in the database, only about 12% are items that are stocked in Orgill’s warehouse,” said Grant Morrow, Orgill’s e-commerce program manager.
“This allows retailers to create an e-commerce offering that truly represents the unique assortment they want to present to their customers.”
Not only does Orgill’s product database include enriched items outside of the distributor’s stocking inventory such as Benjamin Moore paint and Big Green Egg items, but it also includes commodity wood products, sheet goods and more, the firm said.
“What you traditionally see with some of the e-commerce databases available in the industry is that they are fairly limited to either products stocked in a distributor’s warehouse or perhaps available through dropship by that distributor, but that can be very limiting for retailers who offer assortments customized to their markets,” said Morrow.
This data includes most everything a retailer would need to populate an e-commerce website such as high-quality images, long text descriptions, specifications, filterable attributes and links to supporting documents, the company said.
“What’s often overlooked is that this collection of products, data and images is truly unique because we are supporting our customers by providing them with all the enriched product data they need, not just the products that we sell them,” said Marc Hamer, Orgill’s executive vice president, chief information and technology officer.
While reaching the one-million-item milestone is an important evolution of Orgill’s Industry PIM, the company said, what is equally compelling is how Orgill was able to build such a robust collection of product data.
Hamer said: “When we started out, all we had was Orgill-stocked product data, but that didn’t do much good for our customers who wanted to sell from their website. Had we stopped there, this would have placed the burden on them to source and clean up data for other items they stock and sell.”
To overcome this challenge, Orgill worked together with its industry partner, Unilog, and retailers who signed on to participate in the company’s product data program.
As retailers subscribed to the program, Orgill’s product data team analyzed the customers’ item lists to identify gaps in the distributor’s database and then collect what data was available for those items.
Where data was missing, Orgill and Unilog reached out and gathered the assets necessary to enrich the item information, said the company.
“If there is one thing we have seen since we started this project, it’s that e-commerce is becoming more and more important for retailers of all sizes,” said Hamer. “The ability to offer customers a true omnichannel experience is more important than it ever has been, and we will continue to work on ways to improve our offerings.”
Access to Orgill’s Industry PIM, the firm said, as well as its e-commerce and website design services, are open to all Orgill customers.