Grainger Data: 3 MRO Catalogs with UNSPSC, 250K Products from Cromwell
Full MRO catalogs from Grainger, Fastenal and Cromwell for a product content company: UNSPSC, EAN, every attribute and a taxonomy sheet.
What the B2B contract asked for
The scope was written into the contract line by line. Each row carries:
- product name and product image;
- product category;
- date and time of collection, in East Africa Time;
- price and currency;
- stock: in stock, out of stock, or low stock where an app shows it;
- country and app name.
The rows are sorted alphabetically, as the contract required, and each app has its own file for the day. Sold-out products stay in the file with their status, so the client sees not only what a competitor charges, but also what is sold out there that morning.
B2B prices and stock depend on the branch
Two days into the deliveries, the client pointed out that the data showed one city only, while the client and its competitors serve shops in other locations too. An ordering app shows the catalog of the location an account is registered to, and the account holder cannot switch it. What a given account can see is what the data contains.
We suggested the way out: accounts registered at different locations. The client opened accounts tied to its branches, and once they were set up, the daily collection ran on all of them. Each morning's files reflected what every branch account saw, not just one city's view.
Checking the files against the apps, one app at a time
The client checked the first files against the apps on screen. Two details were settled in the first days: the time stamp shows when the data was collected, in East Africa Time, and the stock field is called simply stock, as the client asked.
The apps were added one by one. The first went live 11 days after work started. The second was ordered a week later, and its daily files followed. For the third app, the client asked for a sample first, and the daily files for that app started two months after the first app's.
What the client had
For about eight months, the client received a daily set of files from three competing B2B ordering apps in Kenya and Uganda, due by 7:30 AM East Africa Time. Each file lists every product an account can see, with price, currency, category, image, stock status and a collection time stamp, grouped by country and app. With accounts at each branch, the client could compare its own prices and availability with competitors location by location.
These apps have no pages on our site. We also collect public data from African marketplaces such as Jumia, Kilimall, Konga and Takealot; they were not part of this project. For other app data, see our app data scraping service. Data can come as files, through our API or as a JSON feed. To scope a daily feed of your own, contact our team.
