We are an e-commerce company and sell physical products online in various online marketplaces. We need an online database such as Airtable to store and share data with other collaborators. We are attracted to the Airtable due to the visual aspects of the software, the ability to host image url’s, the formula’s that can modify the data, and the API which allows access by external programs. We also like the ability to simply drag and drop images from the web or our desktop into a field in Airtable and it convert those images into hosted image url’s.
The product data we gather is what is initially made available to us by the manufacturers. We’ll call this “raw data” and store it in one database. Raw data will be manually imported or entered by a specific team.
In essence, we need to be able to produce several product export files that conform to several different file formats which contain specific headers. We ultimately will be importing all of these product files into our inventory management system, but will need them in several different configurations based on the sales channel we will be publishing the products on.
So in Airtable, or whatever we decide to use, we will have one main product database housing the raw product data. From the raw database, we will need to be able to generate custom export files for the following:
- Basic product import file for our inventory management system
- Custom product import file for marketplace 1
- Custom product import file for marketplace 2
- Custom product import file for marketplace 3
- Custom product import file for marketplace 4
- Custom product import file for marketplace 5
- Custom product import file for marketplace 6
- Custom product import file for marketplace 7
- Custom product import file for marketplace 8
Every custom product import file will contain most, if not all, product information from the raw data database. However, they will have extra fields that will need to be populated manually by our team. Once they complete their entries, we will then generate those files and import them into the same inventory management system in which it will be stored separately in its own marketplace database. You don’t have to worry about this part. We just need a system to store, modify, manage and export the original product data from before it gets into our inventory management system.
At the moment, we are thinking that we would export each product file from Airtable once it is ready to be imported into our inventory management system. However, both Airtable and our inventory management system have an API, which I would like to explore. I’m thinking that we can either push or retrieve all product import files into our inventory management system whether that be on a scheduled, triggered or manual basis. I can provide you the API documentation for both for you to review when the time comes.
I imagine most of what I need done can simply be accomplished using Excel or formulas from within Airtable. But, we want to automate as much of this as possible as we are planning on managing and importing tens of thousands of products monthly.
If you are interested in applying, please acknowledge that you understand the full requirements and how you would propose on approaching the project. A rough idea of how long it would take you to complete would be helpful too.
We also need a solution as soon as possible, so please only apply if you are available now to work on this project.
We prefer a fixed price quote once we provide you all of the details.
