Brand Syncing:
Overview

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  1. Overview
  2. How it Works
  3. 18% Survey
  4. Brand Syncing vs. File Sharing
  5. Brand Partners
  6. Product Newsletters
  1. Related: Materials:
  2. Syncing for Retailers
  3. Syncing for Brands
  4. New Synced Products
1,306 retailers save $3,754,750 and 5,364 weeks on website maintenance with Syncing. Join for free »
Retailers save $3,754,750 on website maintenance with Syncing. Join for free »

Helping the Retail Industry Sell 71,142 Products from 115 Brands

Self-updating products logo
Directory Listing for Annieglass
Directory Listing for Anna Weatherley
Directory Listing for Arte Italica
Directory Listing for Baccarat
Directory Listing for Beatriz Ball
Directory Listing for Casafina
Directory Listing for Gien
Directory Listing for Herend
Directory Listing for Joseph Joseph
Directory Listing for Juliska
Directory Listing for Le Creuset
Directory Listing for Messermeister
Directory Listing for Michael Aram
Directory Listing for Mottahedeh
Directory Listing for Royal Crown Derby
Directory Listing for Skyros
Directory Listing for Versace
Directory Listing for Vietri
View complete list of Brand Syncing partners

What Problem Does the Brand Syncing Service Solve?

  • Current options for sharing product data take too long.
  • Current options for adding products to websites are expensive.
  • Businesses that can't efficiently share data are losing market share.
  • The Brand Syncing service fixes these problems. It can be set up in a few minutes. It's free for retailers and affordable for brand partners.
  • The Brand Syncing service is integrated with an online store and registry.
  • Of the top-20 selling tableware and giftware brands, 17 (85%) use the Brand Syncing service.
  • We help businesses work smarter—not harder.

How Does the Service Work?

1

We Give Your
Business
A Free Account

e.g.: yourstore.myshoplocal.com

2

Sync Products

If you are a retailer, you send sync requests to brands that share products via Shop Local. Your account can be populated with up to 71,142 products from 115 Product Syncing Brands for free. You can also add and sell products that are not from a Syncing Brand partner. If you are a brand, you'll receive Sync requests and approve them if you wish.

3

Easily Access Products
& Sell More

As a retailer, you will see your Synced products online in your account. Use the service as an image product library. Search or sort products as if you are on the brand’s website. You can download specific items, collections, an entire brand, or even multiple brands. If you wish, you can activate an online store and make your product library shoppable. Sell these Synced products to customers using your free Store and Registry service. You can export this data and import it to a third-party website or POS.

Brand Syncing Saves Retailers Time and Money

Average Cost to Add 1,000 Products to a Website

Average time of adding an item
Average time of adding an item
Average time of adding an item
  • An indie store often spends 3 minutes and $1 to add one product to its website. To add 1,000 products to its website, it often spends 50 hours and $1,000.
  • This causes the store to add fewer products to its website and puts the store at a disadvantage compared to channels like Amazon.com.
  • The Brand Syncing service reduces this time to just a few minutes to add all the products and the cost to zero (yes, free).
  • The retailer simply receives approval from the Brand Syncing brand partner to sync products.
  • The products appear in the retailer's Shop Local account. When the retailer uses Online Store, the products are ready for shopping and adding to a registry.

Using the above calculations, let's compare the costs of a retailer adding products manually vs. using the Brand Syncing service:

Brand Number of Products Time to Add to Website Manually Cost to Add to Website Manually Annual Cost to Maintain Manual Products Cost to Add to Website Using Syncing Service Time to Add to Website Using Syncing Service
Beatriz Ball 927 6.6 Days $927 $174 Free
Save $1,101
4 Minutes
Save 6.6 Days
Casafina 955 6.8 Days $955 $179 Free
Save $1,134
4 Minutes
Save 6.8 Days
Herend 5,416 38.7 Days $5,416 $1,016 Free
Save $6,432
4 Minutes
Save 38.7 Days
Juliska 1,004 7.2 Days $1,004 $188 Free
Save $1,192
4 Minutes
Save 7.2 Days
VIETRI 2,420 17.3 Days $2,420 $454 Free
Save $2,874
4 Minutes
Save 17.3 Days
Beatriz Ball
Number of Products 927
Time to Add to Website Manually 6.6 Days
Cost to Add to Website Manually $927
Annual Cost to Maintain Manual Products $174
Cost to Add to Website Using Products Syncing Service Free Save $1,101
Time to Add to Website Using Products Syncing Service 4 Minutes Save
6.6 Days
Casafina
Number of Products 955
Time to Add to Website Manually 6.8 Days
Cost to Add to Website Manually $955
Annual Cost to Maintain Manual Products $179
Cost to Add to Website Using Products Syncing Service Free Save $1,134
Time to Add to Website Using Products Syncing Service 4 Minutes Save
6.8 Days
Herend
Number of Products 5,416
Time to Add to Website Manually 38.7 Days
Cost to Add to Website Manually $5,416
Annual Cost to Maintain Manual Products $1,016
Cost to Add to Website Using Products Syncing Service Free Save $6,432
Time to Add to Website Using Products Syncing Service 4 Minutes Save
38.7 Days
Juliska
Number of Products 1,004
Time to Add to Website Manually 7.2 Days
Cost to Add to Website Manually $1,004
Annual Cost to Maintain Manual Products $188
Cost to Add to Website Using Products Syncing Service Free Save $1,192
Time to Add to Website Using Products Syncing Service 4 Minutes Save
7.2 Days
VIETRI
Number of Products 2,420
Time to Add to Website Manually 17.3 Days
Cost to Add to Website Manually $2,420
Annual Cost to Maintain Manual Products $454
Cost to Add to Website Using Products Syncing Service Free Save $2,874
Time to Add to Website Using Products Syncing Service 4 Minutes Save
17.3 Days

The above costs are calculated assuming a person is paid $20/hour and adds 20 products an hour (one product every three minutes).

How Different Business Types Use Syncing

Our Brand Syncing service helps businesses share and sell thousands of products. Your business can use our platform as a 'one-stop shop' to more easily share product information to run your business.

Learn how Syncing can help your business:

 
Are You a Retailer?
Learn More »

For Retailers

  • A retailer uses the Syncing service to display and sell products from its popular brands. The retailer saves time and money because the service enables it to skip downloading product content from many brands' websites.
  • A retailer can activate the Online Store and this product data will auto-populate into this e-commerce site.
  • Without any additional work, what is in the retailer's Shop Local account will become an organized, shoppable website.
Are You a Brand
or Distributor?
Learn More »

For Brands

  • A brand places its products in its account. This enables it to instantly share its items with authorized businesses, including retailers, sales reps, interior designers, and trade show buildings.
  • A brand's products appear in a Synced business's Shop Local account in the same organization as the brand arranged the products in its account. In this way, the brand helps its businesses properly organize its items.
  • A brand only has to update a product once in its account, and that change will take effect on every member's account.
  • This technology ensures that new products, price changes, and discontinued products are taken care of for the businesses.
  • Each retailer may receive its own Store that services and sells to its respective consumer base.
  • Since retailers can instantly display and sell these Synced products online, the brand will sell more.
Are You a
Sales Rep?
Learn More »

For Sales Reps

  • A sales rep uses its free account to view Synced data from brands it reps.
  • The rep saves time by doing this on its account instead of visiting many brand websites.
  • When a rep logs in to its account, it may view orders that its retailers have received for Synced products. This helps the rep service the retailers.
  • The rep keeps its contact information up to date in Shop Local. Retailers use Shop Local to see the rep's telephone number and email address. This makes reordering easier for stores.
  • The rep uses Shop Local to learn about new introductions and price updates.
For Trade Organizations • For Web Designers

Brands and Retailers Report Selling 18% More Due to Syncing

Retailers' Average Increase in Sales
Retailers' average increase in sales due to the Syncing service

Survey base: 42 brick-and-mortar retailers
Two studies have shown that Syncing helps businesses sell more. In a survey conducted by Bridge, retailers reported selling up to 18% more when they use the service. In a study conducted by DeVine Corporation, retailers reported selling 13% more.

See the results from the Syncing survey.

How Do You Update Products On Your Website?

Eliminate Unnecessary Steps

Retailers often go through the following steps when adding a product to their website:

  1. Realize they need a product on their website.
  2. Google the product.
  3. From the Google results, identify the correct product.
  4. Download the product's picture.
  5. Upload the picture to their own website.
  6. Add the price.
  7. Add supporting information (dimensions, description, etc.).
  8. Review the results and consider the process complete.

Bridge's Product Syncing service helps retailers skip all these steps for up to 71,142 products from 115 brands. All the products from a brand are online instantly. No thought needed. Bridge saves hundreds of retailers thousands of hours on website maintenance.

The Syncing Service Makes Adding Products To a Website Easier

Many retailers and brands use Dropbox and Excel to share products. A brand replicates its website by placing the product data in an Excel file, zipping the product images, and sharing this via Dropbox. The retailer then rebuilds the brand’s site on its site. This process resembles this:
Bridge is easier and faster
Bridge is easier and faster
When a retailer adds products individually to its site, that process often entails these steps:
Retailers add products in 7 steps
Our technology bypasses these steps in favor of directly outputting the products in a retailer’s Shop Local Store. A brand loads an item once and it will appear in the approved businesses' accounts.

Example of a Consumer Experience

A product on a traditional retailer's website often has just three pieces of information: a product name, a price, and a picture. This limited information hinders customer from learning about it and making a purchase. This also hurts the item from ranking well in Google.
Our synced products have 40+ variables. This data helps convince shoppers browsing to make a purchase. It also helps Google index the page and send customers to the stores.
Example
Average time of adding an item Retailer's Online Store Without Syncing Product shows just a few pieces of information:
  1. Product name
  2. Price
  3. Picture ~ just one picture
Average time of adding an item Retailer's Online Store With Syncing Product shows 40+ variables, including:
  1. Product name
  2. Price ~ price is dynamic so it's always up-to-date
  3. Multiple pictures
  4. Brand's logo
  5. Manufacturer's SKU
  6. Collection
  7. Dimensions (length, width, and height) and capacity
  8. Description
  9. Stock
  10. Departments (primary, secondary, and tertiary)
  11. Keywords
  12. If item cam be monogrammed
  13. If item is new
  14. UPC
  15. Care (dishwasher safe, freezer safe, etc.)
  16. and more

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

For decades, brands have paid retailers to set up a display in their 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 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, Baccarat, and Juliska. They manage their brand on stores across the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. Shop Local 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.

Read more about our branded online display services.

What Information Is Included With Each Synced Product?

Each synced product contains 40 different variables, including price, length, width, and professional pictures. Each product's data is maintained by its respective brand. Synced product variables include:

Stock Sharing

Brands syncing products may choose to share stock with authorized retailers and sales reps via the platform. Only approved businesses see their stock, and they will only see it once they log in.

Featured brands that share stock:

Showing stock on Shop Local makes it easier for authorized retailers and reps to get stock information. They can set reasonable delivery expectations and reduce calls to customer service.

Shop Local offers different paths to collect stock information from a brand.

Cost: We offer stock sharing for free to Syncing Brands as part of their membership. Please contact Shop Local for more information.

Common Questions

  • Who uses the service?
    Retailers, brands, and sales reps in the United States, Caribbean, and Canada. Of the top-20 selling tableware and giftware brands, 17 (85%) use the Syncing service.
  • What is being shared?
    Members are sharing 71,142 products from 115 brand partners. The shared product data includes prices, professional pictures, dimensions, descriptions, and thirty other key variables. Retailers use this data to keep their websites and in-store POS systems up to date. Members also share news, files, and sales data. Please note: a member has to be approved by the product owner to share data. A member cannot join Shop Local and get unapproved access to a partner brand’s product data.
  • How does the Syncing service work?
    Shop Local's service is a data-sharing and file-sharing platform. The service allows businesses to store and share product data in real-time from one central, secure library (database). Read a walk-through of how the Syncing service works.

Meet the Team Building the Syncing Service

We're Bridge and we've been designing and building websites for businesses since 2001. Today, our platform services hundreds of businesses and processes millions of dollars in sales for clients. Our software leverages 22 years of retail experience to connect the retail and wholesale worlds.
Jason Solarek of Bridge
Bridge's Mission and History

Bridge & Shop Local in the News

Read the HFN articleHFN Magazine
Read the Tableware Today articleTableware Today
American Express
Bridge in the News »

Page tags: automated product updates, automation, labor savings, logistics, self-updating products, image library, image vault, file sharing, image repository, supply chain management, datafeed, social commerce, SoComm, product syncing, optimizing product content, collaboration, team, efficiency, data management, product information management, PIM, Digital Asset Management, DAM, product syncing service, product data syndication