Managing products on a an ecommerce site [closed]
- by John
I've had a site that sells widgets for many years. I do not inventory my widgets, but the cost of adding them to the site and makings sure the site is current is becoming cost prohibitive. Here are the facts:
I sell a single class of widget. I have about 50,000 widgets on my site.
I have about 100 vendors that create and dropship the products when they get an order from me via email.
Each vendor carries from 50 to 5000 types of widgets.
Vendors all have websites with images and descriptions of their products.
Each widget is produced in limited supply and usually sell out in 1-5 years.
Prices of the widget often go up, sometimes more than 50% before they sell out.
My vendors aren't very tech sophisticated. They have websites with their products, but most can't supply an api or database dump. Their websites usually display retail prices to the public, but I login or refer to a price list (usually excel) for wholesale prices.
As it stands now, I hire local people to add and describe each widget to our website. It usually takes a person 4 minutes to add a widget to the site. This doesn't include moving to a new vendor. I feel like the upload/edit process is as good as it can get via a form/website.
The problem is that it is getting very expensive to upload and keep the widget inventory current. I often get orders for something after it's sold out from the vendor or the price is wrong.
This seems like it would be a problem in many industries. Can anyone suggest the cheapest way to upload inventory and ensure prices are current from my vendors? I'm assuming it will involve outsourcing, but I would like ideas on how to setup the compensation model.
