PIM for SMBs: when you really need one and when a spreadsheet is enough

PIM stands for Product Information Management: a single place where product information lives, flowing out to the website, the catalog, the marketplaces. Large companies have had one for twenty years. In the SMBs I work with, product sheets instead sit in someone's spreadsheet, in supplier PDFs, in emails and in the ERP, and every version is slightly different. This piece is to figure out whether the problem is yours, and whether it's worth solving with a tool.

When a spreadsheet is enough

If you have fewer than a few hundred products, a single sales channel, and a single person touching the data, a well-made spreadsheet works. Really. The spreadsheet becomes a problem when two people open it, when the website wants a column the ERP doesn't have, or when you discover the marketplace description is three revisions old. Until that happens, don't buy software.

The signs you need something else

• –Nobody knows which version of a sheet is the right one. Someone asks in chat "is the weight the one on the price list or the one on the site?".
• –The same product needs different descriptions for different channels (site, Amazon, PDF catalog) and every time you start from zero.
• –Enrichment is manual: someone copies from the supplier PDF into the sheet, one at a time. I've seen it done with hundreds of SKUs.
• –The ERP has the right fiscal and logistics data, but it isn't built for long texts, images and attributes that change by category.

Two or more of these, and the hidden cost of lost hours already exceeds that of a tool. The PIM doesn't replace the ERP: the ERP remains the source for codes, prices and stock. The PIM takes those codes and attaches everything else to them.

Why I built miniPIM

The PIMs on the market are built for companies with tens of thousands of SKUs and a dedicated team. They're priced accordingly, and for an SMB with 500 products they're a sledgehammer for a nut. miniPIM comes from the problem I see in my clients: a lightweight PIM for companies up to about 3,000 products, with a minimal setup fee and then a monthly subscription. It does what's needed at that size: one sheet per product, attributes per category, import from files, export to channels. Nothing more.

It works and the features are there. What I'm looking for now are the first companies to try it on their real data, and I'm open to talking with a possible co-founder. If you recognize yourself in the signs above, write to me: we'll look at your files together and I'll tell you whether you need a PIM or just some order in the spreadsheet.