Shop Local for Brands: Syncing Service

Connect with 1,300+ of America's best indie stores

» Start Syncing Your Products

Promote your products on the websites of 1,300+ of America's best indie stores

Brand Syncing is a marketing service that displays your product catalog online for your respective authorized retailers. Promote unlimited products on an unlimited number of your stores' websites. You choose which stores.

Load products to your account and they will appear instantly in approved retailers' online stores.
Use the service to update products and prices. Skip sending Dropbox links and Excel files.
Sync with Shop Local's existing base of 1,346 stores and invite your authorized stores to join the service.
Your brand chooses with which stores you sync. You can sync with a few stores or many. Please note: a store must approve your sync request to complete the sync process.
More than 116 premium brands use this service to help 1,346 indie stores in the United States and Canada sell 72,480 products.

What Is the Brand Syncing Service?

The Brand Syncing service is a marketing tool to promote your products to existing and potential clients. Your business can store and Sync thousands of products (with pictures, prices, and descriptions) with your retailers.

Your retailers can use these products to power their websites and gift registries. You control how your products appear and are organized on your retailers' websites.

Currently, 116 brands Sync 72,480 products with their authorized retailers via our platform.

Benefits:

More easily show your products on your retailers’ websites.
More easily sell your products on your retailers' websites. Brands that use the service sell 18% more. Read the study showing how stores sell more.
Increase the quantity and quality of your product offered.
Increase the number of authorized retailers selling your product online.
Get new customers.
Control how your brand is presented online, including your pricing, picture quality, and descriptions.
Use the Brand Syncing service as a content management system to efficiently distribute your products to clients.

How Does the Service Work For Brands?

We Give Your
Business
A Free Account

yourbrandname.myshoplocal.com

View Live Example:
juliska.myshoplocal.com

Load & Sync Products

You load your products to your account. A Shop Local coach will help you do this. You then send Sync requests to your retailers and reps. Retailers and reps with accounts will receive your requests and approve them. If a business does not have an account, it can open one for free. Once Synced, your brand’s products will be updated automatically in the business’ account.

Attract Customers & Sell More

People will see your Synced products online in your retailers’ Shop Local Online Stores. Your retailers will sell these Synced products to customers, and registrants will use these products to build their gift registry lists. In addition, retailers can use the service as an image and product library. They can export your data and then import it to their third-party website or POS.

View Live Example:
The Ivy House's Juliska Home Page

Retailer Example

Example of How the Service Helps

Juliska, a premium housewares brand, doesn't have to worry about retailers like Babcock Gifts updating its products online because it uses the Brand Syncing service.

site comparison: Bridge vs. non-Bridge retailer

Retailer not using Brand Syncing

Shows 96 Juliska products (missing 712 products; missing 88% of line).
Does not show Juliska's logo.
No Juliska lifestyle images.
Products are not grouped by collection.
Products have incomplete information and often just one product photograph.
Misses most branding opportunities.

Retailer using Brand Syncing

Shows 100% of Juliska's product line (shows all 808 products).
Shows Juliska logo.
Shows Juliska lifestyle images and slides.
Shows all 73 Juliska collections.
Shows pictures for all products.
Maximizes branding opportunities.

Grade: C-

Grade: A+

Most retailers show a fraction of what a brand offers. Due to this, they receive fewer orders; this hurts the retailer and the brand. The Brand Syncing service fixes this problem. Retailers with no web department can quickly sell all of your products on their site.

Cost & Value

Brand Syncing Costs Less Than a $1.99 Cup of Coffee

For $1.40/month, we do these seven things for our brand partner:

We Sync an unlimited number of the brand's products to the retailer's Shop Local Store. The retailer doesn't have to touch Dropbox or Excel.
We give the retailer the ability to download any of the Synced product data (pictures, pricing, etc.).
We give the brand the ability to share news with the store.
We display the brand's sales representative's name and contact information on the brand's page on the retailer's Shop Local Store.
We display the brand's minimum reorder amount, drop ship terms, break-pack terms, and other important information on the retailer's Shop Local Store.
We allow the brand to share files (price lists, catalogs, etc.) with the retailer. (This is the File Sharing service.)
We send an email to the retailer highlighting new introductions, price changes, and archived items from Syncing brands.

» Read more

How Do You Share Your Products With Your Stores?

Do you use Dropbox and Excel? Most brands do. You can use Syncing to speed products to market, cut costs, and unify distribution. You can bypass Dropbox and Excel. With Syncing, your items instantly appear in all the right retail spots.

Let’s compare options for sharing products:


With Excel File	With Brand Syncing
Slow. Requires manual processing and uploading to a website.	Fast. Products appear in a retailer's Shop Local account instantly.
Expensive. A retailer may pay thousands of dollars each month to add and maintain products on its site.	Free. A retailer can use the Brand Syncing service for free.
Requires staff. Requires computer-savvy staff.	Doesn't require more staffing. Maintenance-free product management.
Inaccurate. An indie store maintaining thousands of products is impossible. The store therefore often adds fewer products and cuts corners to save time. Many items lack photos and dimensions.	Accurate. Prices and product content are accurate. Brand Syncing brand maintains its respective items.


With Dropbox	With Brand Syncing
Slow and expensive. A retailer must constantly download Excel files and images and upload this to their website.	Fast and cost-efficient. After one-time Sync, all data from a brand is 'live' on the retailer's Shop Local account.
Disjointed. Brands often send files to different retailer emails and accounts, thereby creating many files in different locations.	Streamlined. Use one Shop Local account to share products and pricelists with hundreds of retailers.
Confusing. Files don't appear in context. Dropbox files are often disordered and not organized like a website nor catalog.	Organized. Products appear next to relevant files. E.g.: Juliska products appear next to Juliska files.
Limited Selection. A store often shows just a fraction of what the brand offers online. Reason: the store has to manually download content from Dropbox and add it to its site.	Greater Selection. A store using Brand Syncing often displays 100% of a brand's products online.

The Brand Syncing Platform

To start the process of Syncing your products, you place them in your Shop Local account. Your Shop Local account acts as database that only shares your products with retailers, sales reps, and businesses with which you've approved Syncing your products.

Sell 18% More

A Retailer's average increase in sales due to Shop Local's Brand Syncing service

Survey base: 42 brick-and-mortar Shop Local retailers

Businesses report selling up to 18% more when they use the Brand Syncing service.
» Read Brand Syncing case study

Retail Members

Easily Sync Your Products With the World’s Top Independent Stores

Persnickety in Madison, MS

1,346 retailers use the Syncing service, including:

» View retailers that use Syncing

Our Brand Clients

Which Brands Use the Syncing Service?

Jason Solarek (Bridge), Andrew Pickard Morgan (Pickard China), Marisa LeDonne (Rosenthal) and Tim DeVine (DeVine Corp.)

» View brands that use the Syncing service

Brand Examples

Annieglass Syncs 291 products with 289 businesses

Beatriz Ball Syncs 938 products with 501 businesses

Casafina Syncs 1,943 products with 463 businesses

DeVine Corporation Syncs 5,182 products with 2,128 businesses

Herend Syncs 5,417 products with 181 businesses

Juliska Syncs 1,176 products with 329 businesses

VIETRI Syncs 2,693 products with 501 businesses

Video: Why Brands Use Syncing

Learn How a Brand Saves Each of Its Stores $750 and 50 Hours

In this nine minute video, Shop Local's Jason Solarek shares how the Brand Syncing service bridges the gap in online distribution. Jason covers:

Why a retailer struggles to add a brand’s products to its website.
An example of how Syncing helps a brand.
How a retailer can use Shop Local Store as a stand-alone site or add it alongside an existing e-commerce offering (such as a Shopify store, Facebook Marketplace, etc.).

Visit our friends at Pizazz: https://pizazz.myshoplocal.com/

Remember In-store, Branded Displays? We've Made Them Digital

For decades, brands have paid retailers to set up a display in the retailers' stores. Ralph Lauren's Polo, Nautica, Jimmy Choo, and other leading brands paid department stores to set up displays and manage their brand appearance. This helps the brands and the stores increase sales.

As we all know, retail has gone digital. Thirty percent of retail sales are now online. What if there was a way for brands to sponsor displays like these physical ones but do so online? There is: our Brand Syncing service allows brands to set up digital displays on a store's website. The brand manages the images and product assortment. The store is responsible for handling the sale and delivering the goods.

More than one hundred brands use our digital display technology, including Versace, Vera Wang, and Juliska. They manage their brand on stores across the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. Bridge brought to indie stores' websites what Bloomingdales used to offer on its store floor. We're allowing brands to operate 'mini-stores' within the retailers' sites.

Adding Your Products

When you join the Syncing service, you'll send us an Excel file. We'll help you format this sheet for import to your Shop Local account. We use the Product Share formatting standards.

» Learn about our standards for formatting data for Brand Syncing

Join

Open a free Shop Local account.
Sign-up for the Brand Syncing service. Plans start at $35/month (View pricing).
We will help you through the steps to load your products to your account. (There is a one-time $329 boarding fee.)
We will show you how to manage your products.
You can add, edit, and delete products. You can add and share files, news, and promotions. What you share will appear in real-time on your friended business's accounts.
You choose with which retailers and businesses you Sync your products.

» Learn more about how the Brand Syncing service works

FAQ for Brand Syncing Service

The consumer purchases the item on the retailer's site. The retailer receives a notification about this order via email.
The retailer looks at its inventory. If it has the item in stock, it ships directly from the store. If the item is not in stock, the retailer will place an order for the item with the brand. Learn more about how the Brand Syncing service works here.

No, a brand does not have to drop ship. If the brand drop ships, a retailer may ask the brand to drop ship a Brand Syncing order. If the brand does not drop ship, the brand may mail the item to the retailer, and the retailer will mail it to the customer. With this model, the retailer charges enough to cover shipping costs and the cost to ship the item to the customer.

If a brand has a minimum order amount, and the retailer has a Bridge order in hand, the retailer will first assess if the order is over the minimum or not. If it's over the minimum, the retailer places the order. If the order is under the minimum, the retailer may decide if there are additional products it would like to order. To meet the minimum requirement, the retailer may order products to fulfill the order as well as stock its store.

About one hour per month.

Yes. The brand chooses with which retailers it syncs its products. A brand member's products will not show up in all retailers' shops. Please note: the retailer must also accept the sync request. Likewise, a retailer can send a sync request. The brand can choose to accept or decline this request.

Yes, a brand can load stock for its Synced Products. The brand has two choices to share stock: 1. Manually upload an Excel file with stock, or 2. Setup an automated FTP process to share stock. If a brand wishes to use FTP, please contact Bridge for details.

The brand controls which businesses see stock. For example, the brand can set the stock to appear only to authorized retailers and reps when logged in. Sharing stock is optional. A Product Syncing Brand member is not required to share its stock.