Product databases

Where to buy product data for an online store or shopping guide

[Darkness]

Hi,

I am looking to setup an UK online shopping guide to electronic products(cameras, tvs etc..) with links to retailers selling the products and user reviews. Basically an consumer opinion type site (yeah I know there are quite a few of them already).

I am wondering if anyone knows where I would obtain databases of electronic products so I would have
information such as (in this case digital cameras) :

Product name : *****
Model number : 454DX435
Manufacturer : *****
Megapixels : 4
Optical Zoom : 2
etc...

I have search google extensively for a place which sells databases of this sort and strangely enough have found nothing. I the only place I know of sells data for dvds/music/books but not electronics.

[irubin]

Amazon has an API available (via XML). You can query for items and got some information.

Amazon.com web services [amazon.com]

[ecommerce man]

It may be worthwhile contacting the manufacturers of the goods you want to feature. Many vendors now provide electronic versions of their price lists which could then be sucked into your database.

[wingslevel]

This is one of my biggest problems. Many of my suppliers don't have good product data in a usable format. Many of them go to their catalog design firm to get the data only to learn that the design firm owns the rights to the images etc. and won't hand them over! Also, lots of manufacturers make product data available "electronically" in pdf format - this is extremely difficult to get into db tables. Another frequent problem is that after weeks of badgering, you get a spreadsheet - only to find that the product descriptions are so truncated from years of global find and replace functions that they are useless.

We are now often taking matters into our own hands - we use teleport to bring our supplier's website to our local server, then write vb code to parse out the data including descriptions, product weight etc. This has proven much faster than dealing with sales reps who don't really understand what we are looking for.

[Darkness]

Now this is funny, I actually still searching for a solution this problem and just now searched for 'ecommerce product databases' on google and actually found my post as the top result. ;)

Didn't realize anyone had replied, thanks for the suggestions.

I cannot use the amazon api as the site will include price comparison of a number of retailers, it's prohibited to use the api for pages where other retailers feature.

The contact manufacturer idea sounds ok although there are many manufacturers and response rate may be low.

I am also looking for product databases for books, music dvds etc. The place which seems to feature on Amazon and other sites is a company called muze which sells product data, unfortunately it's too expensive for me and would end up costing thousands each month.

[valortrade]

Maybe you could try Google Answers to see if there would be any expert there. Good luck.

[wingslevel]

Funny, resolving this problem is one of the things that originally put amazon on the map and ahead of everyone else. The story goes that they rented a small warehouse across the street from Ingraham (sp) books (the largest book wholesaler in the US) and, you guessed it, talked them out of their database. I think it was 2 million records just to start.