For product-heavy companies in industries like manufacturing, construction, fashion, and retail, catalogs are the engines that drive sales. But for many organizations, the process of creating and maintaining these essential sales tools is slow, expensive, and stressful.

Some teams get buried in the manual work of updating massive catalogs, spending weeks copying and pasting data from spreadsheets into design software. Others rely on static PDFs or print materials that can’t keep pace with frequent product updates, forcing them to rebuild everything from scratch every time a price or SKU changes. 

And for businesses managing thousands of products across multiple brands and global markets, outdated systems make it almost impossible to keep catalogs consistent and secure.

This is a real problem and the solution isn’t to work harder, it’s to use a catalog generator.

Why manual catalogs don’t work anymore

Designing a large product catalog already takes time, but it becomes even more draining if you’re still working with PDFs. You export a massive file, only to realize changes are needed, and then you’re forced to go back, edit, and export the whole thing again. This is a big challenge in enterprise catalog management.

In short, manual catalog production creates friction at every step:

  • Time-consuming edits: Copying and pasting product data into layouts wastes hours. One update triggers a chain of repetitive work that delays launches.
  • Costly human errors: A single wrong price or image confuses buyers and damages trust.
  • Inconsistent branding at scale: When multiple teams or regions handle catalogs separately, guidelines get lost and brand consistency suffers.

These inefficiencies can directly impact sales performance.

The Flipsnack solution: centralized, automated catalogs

Flipsnack is a platform for creating digital product catalogs that buyers can interact with and act on. This means that instead of static pages, you build a guided buying experience with the help of interactive features.

Here’s what I mean.

You can add product tags that show price and specs at a glance, embed video to demonstrate features, and let buyers compile shopping lists or send a lead form inside the catalog. 

Present colors, styles, and bundles through the product variation feature, then point people to your webshop or preferred checkout with clear buy buttons. 

Moreover, buyers can email wishlists or order lists, message you on WhatsApp to confirm a pre order, or download a CSV or PDF when they need a quote.

By centralizing catalog creation in a single, automated workflow, you get:

  • Shoppable catalogs in minutes: Enrich every page with interactive, purchase-ready elements.
  • Always up to date: Product info, pricing, and offers refresh instantly under the same link, enabling truly automated inventory catalogs.
    Faster deals: Your sales team and customers always see the latest offers, which speeds up conversions.

Flipsnack is built for multi-location businesses. You can create dedicated workspaces for different brands or departments, assign specific roles and permissions to each team member, and leave comments directly on pages for a faster, more efficient review process. This ensures everyone is working from the same source of truth, maintaining brand consistency while accelerating time to market.

Case studies: transforming static catalogs into sales engines with Flipsnack

Teams choose Flipsnack to run interactive, automated catalogs end to end. The platform connects to your product data for quick updates, supports multi-brand and high volume publishing, and delivers enterprise level security so small teams can operate at scale. What does this mean for them? Engagement goes up, update cycles get shorter, costs come down, and catalogs finally function as real sales tools.

The customer story examples below show how companies in different industries replaced outdated PDFs with dynamic digital catalogs. Each story tackles a concrete problem and maps to pain points you likely face today.

Appliances manufacturing: Electrolux Group 

Electrolux needed a faster and more sustainable way to keep product catalogs current across many markets. The Sweden marketing team looked for a digital tool with interactive features and a mobile friendly reading experience to replace slow, print heavy updates. With Flipsnack they produced region specific catalogs enriched with product videos, image galleries, and clear purchase paths, so trade partners and customers always saw the latest information from a single link.

Results

  • Flipsnack rolled out in 17 countries with 345 digital catalogs created.
  • Online distribution replaced slow physical delivery.
  • 104,000 plus impressions, 76,300 views, and 8,800 downloads from interested buyers.
  • Time to market improved because teams shared one published link instead of waiting weeks for reprints.

Flipsnack is a catalyst in our transition to a more sustainable business… combining the feel of a paper catalog with interactive features that take user experience to the next level.

Fabiola Vidal, Digital Marketing Product Owner at Electrolux.

Jewelry retail case study: Pandora

Pandora runs frequent collection refreshes and manages more than 1,500 jewelry variations, so store teams were constantly chasing updates. In France, associates relied on a 300 page binder and a slow POS search. Finding the right charm or ring took minutes. Inserts and reprints tried to keep pace with launches but stores still fell behind.

Pandora reframed the catalog as a live tool for both shoppers and staff. 

With Flipsnack, they published interactive guides for customers such as an engraving catalog and seasonal selections that update in real time. For associates, they built barcode enabled catalogs for instant lookups and added a digital ring sizer for quick fittings.

A simple in store rollout made adoption easy. QR codes at counters and displays let shoppers scan, choose their language, and browse clean pages with clickable hotspots for details.

What changed

  • Store operations moved faster. Teams searched or scanned instead of thumbing through hundreds of pages. Internal tracking showed a three times improvement in speed.
  • Accuracy became automatic. One edit propagated to every store, which removed sticker patches and stale printouts.
  • Engagement spiked. During a Valentine campaign the QR code was scanned 2,750 times in a few days, with shoppers spending about two and a half minutes per session.

How they scaled it

  • Brand templates kept layout and voice consistent across product categories.
  • The Catalog Generator pulled barcodes, images, and specs from Google Sheets to create ready to publish catalogs with no manual rebuild.
  • A single QR code pointed to a Flipsnack Bookshelf so customers always landed on the latest version.
  • New items and price changes synced instantly.  No new links to distribute and no extra edits for local teams.

The catalog generator solution provided by Flipsnack has allowed us to significantly reduce non-sales tasks in our stores, saving valuable time on a daily basis. Our store teams are absolutely delighted. At the headquarters level, we truly appreciate the responsiveness of the Flipsnack teams and our shared motivation to further develop and enhance our catalogs.

Carla Michel d’Annoville, Pandora’s Retail Excellence Team

💡Flipsnack’s catalog generator lets you upload a spreadsheet or connect a feed to produce a digital catalog in minutes. We will go into more detail shortly and cover this plus three other ways to automate your product catalog.

Construction catalog products case study: Kishigo

Kishigo makes high visibility safety apparel and PPE for construction, road, and industrial work. Their buyers need immediate access to specs, size charts, and compliance details. Static PDFs were slow to update, hard to navigate, and not ideal for field use.

With Flipsnack, Kishigo published an interactive catalog that opens with clear branding and a table of contents visible from the start. Buyers can jump to categories, products, or compliance sections in one click. High quality images and consistent styling keep the experience professional and easy to trust.

Results

  • Faster navigation. The default table of contents gets users to the right section immediately.
  • Quicker technical lookups. Size charts, safety ratings, and fabric data are always at hand, which reduces misfit risk.
  • Better reach. The catalog works on desktop and mobile, so teams in the field see the latest information right away.
  • Stronger brand consistency. Every page follows the same visual rules, reinforcing authority in safety products.

For technical product lines where compliance and clarity matter, an interactive, well structured catalog turns specifications into a selling advantage.

Four ways to automate your catalog workflow with Flipsnack

Every product-heavy business struggles with catalog production differently. Some teams are buried in spreadsheets, others lose time in design cycles, while many still rely on static PDFs that don’t support sales. Flipsnack offers four automation paths to fit your needs, helping you with your enterprise catalog management.

1. Catalog creation with Flipsnack’s API

If you already have structured product data in your ERP or PIM but what slows you down is turning that data into customer ready catalogs and keeping them current, know that Flipsnack’s Catalog API connects these two steps so information moves directly from your source system into live digital catalogs.

Think of the API as a direct feed. SKUs, descriptions, prices, and images flow into Flipsnack and become the building blocks of your catalogs. No spreadsheet exports. No manual uploads. No chasing last minute spec changes. The result is an API driven workflow that publishes faster, stays accurate, and scales across teams and product lines.

With Flipsnack you can generate catalogs from PIM data automatically, streamline the ERP to catalog handoff so updates go live under the same link, reduce errors by syncing from a single source of truth, and scale B2B catalog production across regions without extra effort. This is the ultimate solution for bulk product catalog creation.

How to automate catalog production using Flipsnack API

Flipsnack’s API is built around three core actions that mirror real catalog operations:

  • products.create imports new products from your ERP or PIM into Flipsnack.
  • products.update syncs changes so existing items stay accurate.
  • products.delete removes retired SKUs so outdated items never appear.

And here’s how the actual workflow looks like:

  1. Your ERP or PIM pushes SKUs, prices, images, and descriptions to Flipsnack. 
  2. The API validates and stores everything in the Automation tab from Flipsnack’s dashboard, keeping new items, updates, and removals aligned with your source. 
  3. In Design Studio, that data is ready to drag into layouts, so you publish interactive catalogs that are always current. This allows for automated inventory catalogs.

2. Lead capture with Flipsnack integrations

Catalogs should do more than display products. They should capture demand. In Flipsnack, you can add shopping lists or lead forms, then send submissions to Google Sheets, HubSpot, or Salesforce through Zapier. Each list or inquiry lands in your CRM or order system instantly, with no manual entry. The sales team gets one place to track activity and can respond faster.

3. Generate catalogs from spreadsheets 

If your product data lives in Excel or Google Sheets, copying into layouts wastes time. Flipsnack’s catalog generator lets you upload a spreadsheet or connect a feed to produce a polished digital catalog in minutes. Updates flow under the same link, so sales never worry about old versions. This works best for large SKU counts and frequent changes, especially for automated inventory catalogs.

4. Automate SKU product detection

If your catalogs already exist as PDFs, you do not need to rebuild them. Flipsnack can scan SKUs in the PDF, match them with your CSV product file, and place clickable hotspots that lead to your site or checkout. A static file becomes a shoppable catalog in minutes.

Scale your catalog design with Flipsnack’s templates and custom solutions

Automation is only part of the job. If you just connect a spreadsheet to a tool, you will get a catalog, but not a great one. Flipsnack pairs automation with design so updates stay accurate while the catalog still looks like your brand.

Flipsnack’s catalog generator can apply predesigned templates to your imported product data, to help you get a clean layout without extra effort. When you need more than a standard template, Flipsnack also offers a custom design service.

Our design team builds custom branded Catalog Generator templates for your business or a specific use case. These templates reflect your identity, support specialized product layouts, and keep every catalog professional and consistent so it feels unmistakably yours.

Benefits of Flipsnack custom catalog templates

1. Enforce your brand, effortlessly 

Your custom template is designed to be an exact representation of your brand. Our team adds your logo, color palette, typography, and unique brand elements directly into the template. This ensures every single catalog you publish is perfectly on-brand without you having to manually check or adjust anything.

2. Boost efficiency and consistency 

Instead of starting from scratch for every product update, you can simply drop new data into your custom-made template. This process saves significant time and effort, making it easy to create new, on-brand catalogs for different seasons or promotions. Everyone on your team can use the same locked template, ensuring a cohesive and consistent look across all your publications.

3. Tailored to your products 

Generic templates can’t always accommodate complex or unique product layouts. Our custom templates are built to handle the specific needs of your products. This allows your products to look their best and provides a better shopping experience for your customers.

4. Reduce errors and maintain control 

Using a custom template helps you maintain control over your brand’s image. With locked design elements, your team can only edit the necessary fields, such as product descriptions and prices, without accidentally altering the layout or brand elements. This reduces the risk of errors and ensures that even with a large team, every catalog remains professional and on-brand.

Closing the loop: why catalog automation is non-negotiable

Enterprise catalog management became a necessity for businesses looking to stay competitive and scalable. 

By moving beyond static PDFs and embracing a centralized, automated platform, you can handle bulk product catalog creation with ease, drastically reduce manual work, and ensure your automated inventory catalogs are always up to date. 

The result is a more efficient, accurate, and powerful sales tool that empowers your teams and engages your customers.




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