The InterTrade Catalogue, or ecCatalogue, is where retailers pull your item data before they can order. AIMS360 publishes GS1 barcodes, product attributes and standard color and size codes to it as an EDI 832, straight from the style record, with no portal entry.
The InterTrade Catalogue is where your retailers go to find out what your products are. Register an item there and a purchase order can reference it; leave it stale and the order arrives wrong or not at all. This page explains what the catalogue is, which retailers require it, what data it wants, and how AIMS360 publishes GS1 barcodes, product attributes and standard color and size codes to it as an EDI 832 — with nobody typing into the portal.
The InterTrade Catalogue, also written ecCatalogue, is an electronic product catalogue where suppliers register item data so their retailers can pull it. It holds several hundred attributes per item — the GTIN, UPC or EAN barcode, style number, description, color, size, packaging, images and pricing — and each retailer you grant access to reads your data from it instead of asking you for a spreadsheet.
InterTrade has been part of SPS Commerce since October 2022. The catalogue kept its name, and vendor guides still refer to it as InterTrade or ecCatalogue.
The idea is straightforward: rather than every retailer collecting item data from every vendor in its own format, the vendor maintains one authoritative record and the retailers subscribe to it. In practice that only works if the vendor's record is actually current, which is where the whole model quietly breaks down for brands maintaining it by hand.
Structurally it is the same job as the OpenText GXS Active Catalogue does for a different set of retailers. Most brands selling across department stores end up needing both, which is exactly why maintaining catalogs by hand stops scaling around the second or third retailer.
You will see the same thing called the InterTrade Catalogue, the InterTrade ecCatalogue, the InterTrade product catalogue, the InterTrade UPC catalogue, or just "the catalogue" in a vendor guide. They are all this.
Retailers do not usually present this as optional. If your buyer's system sources item data from InterTrade, registering there is a condition of receiving electronic purchase orders at all.
| Retailer or group | What they use it for | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Neiman Marcus Group | Vendor UPC registration for the group's divisions, including Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. | NMG systems match your style number in the catalogue, pull the barcode and write it into the purchase order. |
| Indigo | Vendor product data and content, feeding the retailer's own product information system. | Registration runs through Indigo's own InterTrade portal. |
| Canadian and cross-border programs | Item and price data for retailers operating in Canada or selling across the border. | InterTrade's roots are Canadian, and it remains common in that market. |
| Specialty and off-price retailers | Catalogue-based item onboarding ahead of first orders. | Requirements differ by program; the vendor guide is the authority. |
Confirm against the current vendor guide before you build anything. Retailers revise these requirements, and each one decides independently which of InterTrade's attributes are mandatory for its assortment — two retailers on the same catalogue can demand meaningfully different data.
InterTrade accepts data three ways. All three produce a valid catalogue. Only one of them scales past a couple of retailers and a couple of hundred SKUs.
| Method | How it works | Where it breaks |
|---|---|---|
| Web entry | Someone logs into the catalogue and types each item's attributes into a form. | Immediately. A single style in eight colors and six sizes is 48 records, and every price change starts over. |
| Excel template | Export from your system, reshape into InterTrade's template, upload the file. | At the reshaping step. The template is not your export, so someone maps columns and looks up codes by hand every season. |
| EDI 832 | Your ERP builds the EDI 832 price and sales catalog and transmits it directly. | Only if your ERP cannot actually generate an 832, which is the common case. |
Repeat for every price change, every dropped color, every new retailer.
Change a price or drop a color and a maintenance 832 goes out on its own.
Being straight about the commercial side: you still register with InterTrade and you still hold the catalogue subscription, which InterTrade bills you monthly, usually with a discount as you add retailers. AIMS360 does not remove that relationship and does not add a per-document or per-line fee of its own. What it removes is the data entry.
AIMS360 develops and owns its EDI engine, and that engine runs inside the consumer brands ERP. There is no third-party translator between your styles and the catalogue.
Set up your InterTrade account and grant each retailer access to your data. This part stays yours — it is your subscription and your trading relationship, and AIMS360 does not sit in the middle of it.
Create the style with its full color and size matrix, pack configuration, costs and prices. Everything the catalogue asks for is a property of this record, which is why nothing downstream needs re-entering.
AIMS360 assigns the GS1 UCC-12, EAN-13 or GTIN-14 for each color and size, and maps your internal color and size values to the standard NRF and GS1 US color and size codes and their descriptions. No code table, no lookup, no per-retailer spreadsheet.
AIMS360 assembles the EDI 832 price and sales catalog itself, validates it against the InterTrade specification, transmits it, and processes the 997 functional acknowledgment that comes back.
Change a price, discontinue a colorway, adjust packaging or add a style, and a maintenance 832 goes out without anyone logging into the catalogue. The same record also feeds your GXS catalog and your retailer-direct catalogs, so they cannot drift apart.
One point worth stating plainly, because the ownership change confuses people: sending your catalog to InterTrade is not the same as licensing SPS Commerce as your EDI provider. AIMS360 does not resell, white-label or broker SPS Commerce, TrueCommerce, DiCentral, Cleo or any other EDI service. Your documents are built, mapped, validated and transmitted by AIMS360 software.
InterTrade supports several hundred attributes, and each retailer decides which of them are mandatory for its assortment. This is the core set nearly every apparel and consumer goods program asks for, and where AIMS360 sources each one.
| Attribute | Source in AIMS360 | Without built-in EDI |
|---|---|---|
| GTIN, UPC or EAN | Assigned when the style is built from your GS1 company prefix | Generated, then exported and re-entered |
| Vendor style number | The style record itself | Copied across, sometimes inconsistently |
| Product description | The style description | Rewritten per catalog |
| Color code and description | Mapped automatically to NRF and GS1 US standard codes | Looked up in a code table by a person |
| Size code and description | Mapped automatically from your size scale | Looked up by a person, per size, per scale |
| Pack and prepack configuration | The pack setup already in the ERP | Re-described in each portal |
| Weight and dimensions | The style's physical details | Re-entered, or omitted and rejected |
| Country of origin, fabric content | Style attributes carried from production | Chased down per season |
| Wholesale cost and suggested retail | Live pricing, with effective dates | Copied from a spreadsheet that ages immediately |
| Adds, changes and deletes | Maintenance 832s sent when the record changes | Manual edits in every portal, or a full re-upload |
Barcodes come from GS1. You license a company prefix and assign GTINs underneath it; AIMS360 generates the correct UCC-12, EAN-13 or GTIN-14 per color and size. Product images are required by some programs and are handled per retailer.
A retailer's system looks up your item in the catalogue, matches your style number, pulls the corresponding UPC or EAN, writes it into the purchase order, and transmits that order to you. No catalogue entry, no order.
That single mechanic explains most of the pain vendors blame on other things. An item missing from the catalogue does not generate a late order, it generates no order. An item with a stale price generates an 850 purchase order at the wrong price, which becomes an 810 invoice the retailer short-pays, which becomes a chargeback months later when nobody remembers the catalogue was the cause.
Retailers also set deadlines. The Neiman Marcus Group expects new SKU data posted within four to six weeks after market. That is a comfortable window when the catalogue is fed by your ERP and a punishing one when a person is typing a season's assortment into a web form.
AIMS360 sends the 832. Items, barcodes, colors, sizes and prices land in InterTrade.
Retailers you granted access read the item record and match it to their internal assortment.
AIMS360 receives the 850 and creates the sales order, reserving inventory in the same system.
The 856 advance ship notice goes out with UCC 128 carton labels, then the 810 invoice — all built from the same records, so the price on the invoice matches the price in their item file.
What consumer brands ask most often about the ecCatalogue, retailer requirements, and getting item data in without typing it.
The InterTrade Catalogue, also written ecCatalogue, is an electronic product catalogue where suppliers register their item data so retailers can pull it. It holds several hundred product attributes per item, including the GTIN, UPC or EAN barcode, style number, description, color, size, packaging, images and pricing. Retailers you have granted access to read your data from it rather than asking you for a spreadsheet. InterTrade has been part of SPS Commerce since October 2022.
Yes. ecCatalogue is InterTrade's product name and the two are used interchangeably. You will also see it called the InterTrade product catalogue, the InterTrade UPC catalogue, or simply "the catalogue" in a retailer's vendor guide.
The Neiman Marcus Group runs its vendor UPC registration through the InterTrade ecCatalogue, covering Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and the group's other divisions. Indigo requires it of its vendors in Canada. It is also used by a range of other North American retailers, particularly Canadian and cross-border programs. Always confirm against the current vendor guide, because retailer requirements change and each retailer decides which attributes are mandatory for its own assortment.
There are three routes. You can key items into the web interface by hand. You can fill in an Excel template and upload it. Or you can send an EDI 832 price and sales catalog from your ERP, which is the only one of the three that does not involve a person retyping data. AIMS360 uses the 832 route.
Yes. AIMS360 generates the EDI 832 from the style record itself and transmits it to InterTrade. The UPC or EAN, the style and description, the standard color and size codes, the pack configuration and both price levels all come from data that already exists in the ERP because you built the style there. Nobody exports a spreadsheet and nobody logs into the catalogue to type.
Yes, and this is worth being clear about. You register with InterTrade, you hold the catalogue subscription, and you grant each retailer access to your data. InterTrade charges you a monthly fee for that subscription, typically with a discount as you add retailers. What AIMS360 removes is the manual data entry, not the relationship. AIMS360 does not charge a per-document or per-line fee on top.
No, and the distinction matters. InterTrade is a catalogue your retailers read from, and it happens to be owned by SPS Commerce since October 2022. AIMS360 sends a document to it, the same way it sends documents to a retailer. Your EDI engine is still AIMS360's own software: AIMS360 builds the X12 file, maps it, validates it, transmits it and handles the acknowledgment. AIMS360 does not resell, white-label or broker SPS Commerce, TrueCommerce, DiCentral, Cleo or any other EDI service provider.
It varies by retailer, because each retailer chooses which of InterTrade's several hundred attributes are mandatory for its assortment. The common core is the GTIN, UPC or EAN barcode obtained through GS1, your vendor style number, a product description, color and size (usually both a standard code and a description), the pack or prepack configuration, physical details such as weight and dimensions, country of origin, your wholesale cost and the suggested retail price. Many programs also want product images.
Most apparel and accessories programs expect them, and InterTrade supports them directly. They are the standard retail codes long published by the National Retail Federation and administered by GS1 US since June 2020 as the GS1 US Color and Size Codes. Routing guides still use both names. AIMS360 maps your internal color and size values to the standard codes automatically, so you are not looking anything up in a table.
From GS1. You license a company prefix from GS1 and assign GTINs underneath it. AIMS360 generates the correct UCC-12, EAN-13 or GTIN-14 for each color and size when you build the style, so the barcode exists before the catalogue ever asks for it.
This is the part vendors underestimate. A retailer's system looks up your item in the catalogue, matches your style number, pulls the matching UPC or EAN, and writes it into the purchase order it sends you. If your item is not in the catalogue, or the data is stale, the order either does not come or comes with details that will not match your invoice later. The catalogue is upstream of everything.
Retailers set their own. The Neiman Marcus Group, for example, expects new SKU data to be posted within four to six weeks after market. That window is comfortable if the catalogue is fed by your ERP and uncomfortable if someone has to type a season's worth of styles into a web form.
AIMS360 sends a maintenance 832. Each line in an 832 carries a maintenance type that tells the catalogue whether the item is being added, changed or deleted, so a price change or a discontinued color propagates on its own without resending your entire catalog and without anyone logging in.
Yes. Most brands selling across department stores need both, plus retailer-direct catalogs. AIMS360 publishes from the same style record to each destination in that destination's required format, so the item data cannot drift between catalogs the way it does when each one is maintained by hand.
One team. Because the EDI engine and the ERP are the same platform, the people supporting your catalogue submission are the people who built the map and can see the underlying style record. With a bolted-on EDI provider, a rejected catalogue file usually means opening tickets with both your ERP vendor and your EDI vendor and waiting while each points at the other.
AIMS360 publishes your barcodes, product data and standard color and size codes to the InterTrade Catalogue, the OpenText GXS Active Catalogue and your retailers directly — generated from the styles you already built.
