ASI member network + PromoStandards EDI, how does the supplier integration work?

ASI (Advertising Specialty Institute, asicentral.com) is the industry trade body, ~25,000 distributors + ~3,000 suppliers. Membership ($395/yr distributor / $1,500+/yr supplier) gets you the ASI Online catalog, ESP (search platform), and the ASI member directory.

PromoStandards.org publishes the open EDI spec that ASI suppliers use. Specifically:

• ProductDataService, product feeds (SKU, color, size, decoration capabilities, decoration zones, available imprint methods).
• ProductPricingService, live pricing including quantity-break tiers and decoration upcharges.
• InventoryService, real-time stock checks per SKU.
• OrderShipmentNotificationService, supplier-side fulfillment tracking.
• OrderStatusService, PO status (in production / decorated / shipped).
• Invoice + Media services, billing + product imagery.

One Magento integration consumes the standard and syncs from any compliant supplier. The big ones: SanMar, Alphabroder, S&S Activewear (apparel), Vantage, PCNA, Hit Promotional, Edwards (hard goods + drinkware).

Architecturally: nightly cron pulls product + inventory + pricing deltas, writes to Magento via custom REST endpoints (skipping the catalog indexer for speed), denormalised pricing table holds tier breaks per supplier. Saves ~40h/week of manual SKU upkeep at 50,000+ items. Build cost: ~$12k-$25k per supplier feed (mostly one-time spec mapping; subsequent suppliers reuse the same connector framework).