Improving catalog quality and pricing visibility for an automotive distributor
How an automotive-parts distributor unified enrichment, deduplication, and price monitoring across 120,000 products
Current phase: ACTIVE CUSTOMER DEPLOYMENT — catalog-quality workflow in place
An automotive aftermarket distributor wanted to grow direct ecommerce sales from a catalog of approximately 120,000 products. The catalog had been built to support marketplace operations, but the direct website exposed missing images, thin descriptions, duplicate entries, inconsistent categories, and confusing compatibility information.
The domain made those gaps costly. The same functional part could be supplied by 40–50 brands at different quality and price tiers, while compatibility varied by vehicle year and trim.
Claro was implemented for a combined workflow covering catalog enrichment, duplicate detection, categorization, and brand-aware competitor price monitoring. The results are delivered through controlled CSV files, allowing the distributor to improve its catalog without introducing a risky direct ERP integration.
At a glance
Industry: Automotive aftermarket distribution
Region: Europe
Operating model: B2C and B2B distributor using an ERP and PrestaShop
Scale: Approximately 120,000 products, 40–50 aftermarket brands, and an eight-person ecommerce team
Primary Claro workflow: Automotive catalog enrichment and deduplication
The challenge
Customers needed to identify the right part for a specific vehicle, but incomplete fitment information and inconsistent tags made it difficult to filter safely.
Duplicate and near-duplicate records fragmented search and could cause pricing, stock, and content to diverge for the same underlying part.
Price monitoring also required domain context. Comparing every brake pad indiscriminately would be misleading because brands occupy different quality and pricing positions.
Why the existing approach was not enough
A previous vendor had attempted direct database access, was blocked by the ERP provider, and failed to provide reliable timing or pricing. That made a deep integration the wrong starting point.
Marketplace optimization alone did not fix the distributor’s own catalog, and generic scraping could not establish like-for-like product or brand comparisons.
The workflow therefore needed explicit schemas, controlled file-based delivery, and validation before any deeper integration decision.
The solution
Claro processes representative groups of products spanning different brands, categories, duplicate patterns, and levels of fitment complexity.
The workflow combines source-based enrichment with duplicate detection, category and tag normalization, and product matching for brand-level pricing analysis.
Controlled CSV outputs allow the distributor to validate and import enriched records through its existing process without granting an external system direct access to the ERP.
How the workflow works
Select the product records to process — The distributor supplies products spanning relevant brands, categories, duplicate patterns, and fitment complexity.
Resolve products and approved sources — Claro identifies manufacturer and technical references and separates equivalent products from different brand and quality tiers.
Enrich missing catalog fields — Images, descriptions, attributes, categories, tags, and available compatibility information are prepared.
Detect duplicates and inconsistent variants — Records that appear to represent the same product or improperly separated variants are flagged.
Match like-for-like prices — Competitor observations are connected to equivalent products and appropriate brand tiers rather than compared indiscriminately.
Return reviewed CSV output — The ecommerce team validates and imports the results through its existing catalog-management process.
Results and current status
The deployment established a single data workflow around three connected commercial problems: incomplete product pages, catalog duplication, and weak pricing visibility.
Claro gives the distributor a controlled way to improve product records, identify likely duplicates, normalize catalog structure, and compare relevant competitor prices without depending on direct ERP access.
The workflow can be expanded progressively across the 120,000-product catalog while keeping review and import decisions under the customer’s control.
Why this workflow matters
Automotive catalogs are identity-heavy. Enrichment, deduplication, fitment, and pricing cannot be treated independently when the same functional part exists across many brands and vehicle applications.
Key takeaway
Claro allows the distributor to improve a large and complex automotive catalog without repeating the integration problems it had already experienced. The CSV-first workflow makes data quality measurable and operational before deeper system changes are introduced.
Frequently asked questions
Can Claro identify duplicate automotive parts? Yes. Matching can combine identifiers, manufacturer data, descriptions, fitment information, and category context to flag likely duplicates or equivalent records.
How is vehicle compatibility handled? Fitment can be extracted from reliable sources and structured by vehicle, year, trim, or application, with confidence and provenance available for review.
Can competitor prices be compared by brand tier? Yes. The comparison set can reflect the distributor’s brand and quality logic rather than treating every visually similar product as equivalent.
Why use CSV instead of a direct ERP integration? A controlled file workflow reduces implementation risk, protects the ERP, and allows the customer to validate data quality before enabling deeper write-back.
Can the same workflow support marketplaces and the direct site? Yes. The validated product record can feed PrestaShop, marketplaces, and other downstream channels.
