What Retailers Look for in a Supplier Data Feed

If you’re a furniture or home goods supplier looking to work with online retailers, your product data feed is the single most important asset you have. It’s not a technical detail — it’s the foundation of the entire commercial relationship.

A good data feed means a retailer can onboard your products in hours. A poor one means weeks of manual work, errors, and frustration. Many retailers will simply pass on suppliers whose data isn’t up to standard, regardless of how good the products are.

This guide explains exactly what online furniture retailers need from a supplier data feed, why each element matters, and how to structure your data for maximum reach.

Why data feeds matter

Every product on a retailer’s website starts as a row in your data feed. The product name, description, images, price, dimensions, stock status — all of it comes from you. The retailer can enhance and curate, but they can’t create what doesn’t exist.

Suppliers with clean, comprehensive data feeds work with more retailers, get listed faster, and sell more products. It’s the closest thing to a competitive advantage that doesn’t involve the product itself.

The essential fields

At minimum, a data feed needs these fields for each product:

SKU / Product code

A unique identifier for each product. This is how the retailer’s system tracks your products. It should be stable — don’t change SKUs unless the product itself changes.

Product name

Clear, descriptive, and consistent. “Solid Oak 2-Door Sideboard” tells the retailer and the customer exactly what they’re looking at. Avoid internal codes or abbreviated names that mean nothing outside your warehouse.

Description

A proper product description — not a repeat of the product name. This is what the customer reads before deciding to buy. Include materials, construction methods, finish details, and anything that sets the product apart.

The best supplier descriptions are 100 to 200 words, written in plain English, and focused on what the customer wants to know. Many retailers will rewrite descriptions to match their brand voice, but they need substance to work with.

Category

Which product category does this item belong to? Desks, sideboards, bookcases, garden furniture, lighting. Clear categorisation helps retailers map your products to their store structure.

Price

Your trade price. Be clear about whether this includes VAT, and whether there are volume tiers. Retailers need a stable price they can build their retail margin on top of.

Images

This is where most suppliers fall short. Retailers need:

• High-resolution images — minimum 1000px on the longest edge, ideally 2000px+
• Multiple angles — front, side, detail shots, and at least one lifestyle/room setting
• White or neutral background for the primary product shot
• Consistent styling across the range

Images sell furniture. A beautiful product with poor photography will underperform a mediocre product with professional images. If you invest in one thing, invest in this.

Provide image URLs in the feed rather than sending zip files. URLs that the retailer can programmatically download and cache are far more efficient than manual file transfers.

Dimensions

Length, width, height — with clear units (cm or mm). For furniture, customers need to know if it fits their space. Missing dimensions are a conversion killer.

Include internal dimensions for items with shelves, drawers, or compartments. “Internal drawer dimensions: 30cm x 25cm x 10cm” answers the question before it’s asked.

Weight

Important for shipping calculations and for the customer to understand what they’re buying. A 45kg solid oak desk sets different expectations to a 12kg flat-pack alternative.

Stock status

Either a simple in-stock/out-of-stock flag, or a stock quantity. This needs to be accurate and updated regularly — ideally daily. Nothing damages a retail relationship faster than selling products that turn out to be out of stock.

EAN / Barcode

If available. Useful for product matching across systems and for marketplace listings.

Nice-to-have fields

Beyond the essentials, these fields add significant value:

• Material — “Solid mango wood,” “Hand-blown glass,” “100% wool”
• Colour / Finish — “Natural oak,” “Antique brass,” “Matt black”
• Assembly required — Yes/no, and estimated assembly time
• Country of origin — Increasingly important to UK consumers
• Lead time — For made-to-order items
• Related products — Items that complement each other (a desk and a matching bookcase)
• RRP — Suggested retail price, if you have one

Feed format

CSV is the standard in the UK furniture wholesale market. It’s simple, universally readable, and doesn’t require technical integration. A well-structured CSV with consistent column headers is all most retailers need.

XML works too, particularly for larger catalogues or where hierarchical data (variants, multiple images) needs to be represented cleanly.

API access is ideal but rare in the UK furniture sector. If you offer it, retailers will love you for it. Real-time stock queries and automated order placement via API is the gold standard.

Whichever format you use:

• Use consistent column headers
• Don’t change the structure without notice
• Include every product in every feed (don’t send incremental updates unless agreed)
• Use UTF-8 encoding
• Use ISO date formats (YYYY-MM-DD)

Update frequency

Stock levels: Daily is the minimum. Hourly is ideal. Selling out-of-stock products destroys customer trust and creates refund overhead for everyone.

Product data: Weekly or on change. New products, updated descriptions, new images — push these regularly.

Pricing: On change, with reasonable notice. Retailers need time to update their listings.

Common mistakes

Inconsistent image quality. Some products have six professional shots, others have one blurry photo taken on a warehouse floor. The products without good images won’t sell.

Missing dimensions. If a customer has to email to ask if a sideboard fits their alcove, they’ll buy from someone else.

Stale stock data. A feed that says “in stock” when the product hasn’t been manufactured in six months. This creates customer complaints and damages the retailer’s reputation.

Internal jargon in product names. “MNG-SB-2DR-NAT” means something to your warehouse team. It means nothing to a customer.

No feed at all. Some suppliers expect retailers to manually copy product information from their website. This doesn’t scale and most serious retailers won’t engage.

How to get started

If you’re a UK furniture or home goods supplier and your data feed needs work, start here:

1. Audit your current data — Export your catalogue and check for missing fields
2. Invest in photography — It has the highest ROI of any improvement you can make
3. Set up automated exports — A daily CSV export from your stock system costs almost nothing to maintain
4. Talk to retailers — Ask what they need. Most will tell you exactly what’s missing

The suppliers who get this right sell more products through more channels with less friction. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s the work that pays.

Want to work with us? If you have a quality product range and a structured data feed, we’d like to hear from you. hello@luxurystores.co.uk