One integration. 300+ promo suppliers. Live data, automated orders.
We wire the full PromoStandards stack - product, inventory, pricing, order submission, status, shipment, and media - into your storefront, ERP, and CRM. Replace stale SAGE / ESP data and manual portal entry with one live, supplier-direct API surface.
Integration at a glance
Why PromoStandards
The only honest way to sell promo at scale.
Promo is the last billion-dollar industry still running on spreadsheets, CSV dumps, and 8-hour-old database snapshots. PromoStandards is the one industry-wide API that fixes it - and it's owned by the industry, not a marketplace.
It's the only real API standard in promo
PromoStandards is industry-owned, supplier-supported, and growing - 300+ suppliers publish it today, including SanMar, alphabroder, S&S, Hit, Gemline, Bag Makers, and most top-50 suppliers.
Real-time data instead of nightly dumps
Forget waiting for SAGE / ESP database refreshes. Pricing, inventory, and status are pulled live from the supplier - so what your customer sees is what the supplier actually has.
Direct net pricing - no marketplace markup
Your supplier relationships, your net cost, your margin. Distributor associations and search marketplaces sit in the middle and never see your contract pricing. PromoStandards doesn't.
Order automation that actually closes the loop
Submit POs by API, pull status by API, reconcile invoices by API. Your CSR team stops re-keying orders into supplier portals and stops emailing for tracking numbers.
Problems we solve
Every daily promo headache, fixed in code.
If your team is re-keying orders, chasing tracking, or apologizing for sold-out SKUs - PromoStandards eliminates the root cause, not the symptom.
SAGE / ESP database is hours-to-days stale
Live inventory and pricing pulled at quote time - no oversold orders
Catalogs scraped from supplier PDFs and websites
Structured PDS feed: products, decorations, charges, attributes - normalized
CSRs re-key orders into 20+ supplier portals
Order Submission API closes the loop straight from your ERP / portal
Tracking chased by email and phone calls
Order Status + Shipment Notification syncs into your portal automatically
Price books re-uploaded quarterly - stale margins, lost deals
PPC service returns live net pricing with quantity breaks at every quote
Spec sheets and virtual samples managed in shared drives
Media Content service streams imagery and spec docs straight from the supplier
The PromoStandards services
Every service, production-wired.
We don't cherry-pick the easy services. Catalog, inventory, pricing, ordering, status, shipping, invoicing, media - all wired with per-supplier fallbacks for services any given supplier hasn't implemented yet.
Product Data (PDS)
Pull normalized product, color, size, decoration, and imprint data from every supplier that publishes PDS. No more wrangling per-supplier CSVs, PDFs, or scraped catalogs.
- Products + variants
- Colors, sizes, decorations
- Media & imagery URLs
- Compliance attributes
Inventory (Inv)
Live stock levels from supplier warehouses - by color, size, and location. Quote with confidence and stop selling air on hot-ticket SKUs.
- Real-time quantity-on-hand
- Per-warehouse breakdown
- Expected restock dates
- Subscription + on-demand polling
Pricing & Configuration (PPC)
Net and list pricing with quantity breaks, surcharges, charges (run, setup, run-charge), and currency - directly from the supplier, not a 90-day-old price book.
- Net + list pricing
- Quantity-break logic
- Charges + upcharges
- Currency + FX aware
Order Submission (OSN)
Submit purchase orders programmatically - line items, decoration instructions, artwork references, ship-to, ship method, requested in-hands date. With idempotency and clean error mapping.
- PO + artwork submission
- Decoration & imprint specs
- Ship-to + in-hands dates
- Idempotent + retry-safe
Order Status (OSS) & Shipment (OSNS)
Pull production and shipment status by PO. Forward updates to your CRM, customer portal, and email/SMS automations. No more chasing CSRs for tracking.
- Production stage events
- Tracking numbers + carrier
- Multi-shipment orders
- Polling + diff strategy
Invoice (Inv) & Media Content (MC)
Invoice pull for AR reconciliation. Media content (product images, virtual samples) wired into your storefront - always the latest assets straight from the source.
- Invoice ingestion for AR
- Hi-res imagery sync
- Virtual sample URLs
- Spec sheet attachments
PromoStandards vs SAGE / ESP+
A live API beats a stale search platform.
SAGE and ESP+ are great for prospecting. They were never built to power your storefront, your quoting, or your fulfillment. Here's the honest comparison.
Built for engineers
Typed clients over SOAP. Per-supplier adapters. No XML in your app code.
PromoStandards is SOAP/XML under the hood. We hide all of that behind a clean TypeScript SDK with typed requests, normalized responses, and per-supplier adapters that smooth out the quirks every distributor knows too well.
- TypeScript SDK in your repo
- WSDL-generated typed clients
- Per-supplier adapter layer for quirks
- Automatic retry + idempotency on OSN
- Structured logs + Sentry / Datadog hooks
- Sandbox/production env separation
// Live inventory from any PromoStandards supplier
const stock = await ps.inventory.get({
supplier: "sanmar",
productId: "PC54",
filter: { partColor: "Athletic Heather", size: "L" },
});
// Live net pricing with quantity breaks
const price = await ps.pricing.quote({
supplier: "alphabroder",
productId: "G500",
quantity: 144,
currency: "USD",
fobId: "TX",
});
// Submit a decorated PO programmatically
const po = await ps.orders.submit({
supplier: "ssactivewear",
poNumber: "DSTR-48201",
lines: [
{ productId: "5000", color: "Black", size: "XL", qty: 72 },
],
decorations: [
{ method: "screen-print", location: "left-chest", colors: 2, artworkUrl },
],
shipTo, inHandsDate,
});
// Pull order status + shipment events into your CRM
ps.status.subscribe(po.poNumber, async (evt) => {
await crm.orders.update(po.id, evt);
});Go-to-market in 6 weeks
From kickoff to live PromoStandards orders in 6 weeks.
The plan below is our typical engagement covering 10–20 priority suppliers. Bigger rosters extend it - never by much.
Supplier scope & credentials
Pick the top 10–20 suppliers driving 80% of revenue. Provision PromoStandards credentials. Map services available per supplier (PDS, Inv, PPC, OSN, OSS, MC).
Catalog & pricing live
PDS ingestion + image sync. PPC pricing wired into product pages and quote tool. First end-to-end live quotes against real supplier data.
Inventory & order submission
Inv polling into your storefront with cache + freshness strategy. OSN order submission against supplier sandboxes. Decoration/imprint mapping tested.
Status, shipment & invoicing
OSS + OSNS wired into your portal/CRM. Invoice ingestion into AR. Customer-facing tracking and status pages live.
Fallbacks, monitoring & launch
Per-supplier fallbacks for missing services (e.g., older suppliers without PPC). Sentry + Datadog monitoring. Production cutover with hypercare.
What ships
Production-grade from day one.
Every PromoStandards engagement ships with documentation, monitoring, a per-supplier health dashboard, and a 30-day hypercare window. Your team owns the integration after handoff.
- Supplier credentials wired (sandbox + production)
- PDS catalog ingestion + image sync jobs
- Live PPC pricing endpoint with quantity breaks
- Inventory (Inv) service with cache + polling strategy
- Order submission (OSN) with decoration mapping
- Status + shipment (OSS / OSNS) → CRM / portal
- Per-supplier fallbacks for missing services
- Invoice ingestion (Inv) for AR reconciliation
- Admin dashboard for sync health + error queue
- Runbook, monitoring & 30-day hypercare
Who it's for
Built for everyone selling promo - distributors, decorators, agencies, programs.
Promo distributors
Unify SanMar, alphabroder, S&S, Hit, Gemline, and 50+ more under one storefront - live stock, live pricing, automated PO submission.
Decorators & ASI shops
Quote with confidence - never oversell a hot SKU. Submit decorated POs with imprint specs without re-keying anything.
Corporate program managers
Branded company stores with budget controls, approvals, and supplier-direct fulfillment for swag and uniform programs.
Promo agencies & enterprise sellers
Replace SAGE / ESP search marketplaces with a private, in-house catalog backed by your real supplier relationships and net pricing.
Selected work
PromoStandards-powered storefronts we've shipped.
Production storefronts running on live supplier APIs - quoting, ordering, and tracking against real PromoStandards services today.
Under the hood
The protocol-level details.
PromoStandards is SOAP + XML. We engineer everything around it so your app code never sees an envelope - only typed, normalized data.
“PromoStandards integration that actually works. Inventory and order status are finally live, not stale - our CSRs stopped re-keying POs into supplier portals on day one.”
FAQ
Engineering answers, up front.
What is PromoStandards, exactly?
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PromoStandards is the promotional products industry's open API standard, governed by a non-profit consortium of suppliers and distributors. It defines SOAP/XML services for product data (PDS), inventory (Inv), pricing (PPC), order submission (OSN), order status (OSS), shipment notification (OSNS), invoice, and media content - so any distributor can integrate any supporting supplier through one spec.
How is PromoStandards better than SAGE or ESP+?
+
SAGE and ESP+ are search platforms with cached supplier data - pricing and inventory are snapshots that go stale fast, and you can't submit POs through them. PromoStandards is a live API to the supplier itself. You get real-time data, automated order submission, and you own the integration end-to-end - no per-seat platform tax, no marketplace sitting between you and your supplier relationship.
Which suppliers actually implement PromoStandards well?
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Coverage varies. SanMar, alphabroder, S&S Activewear, Hit Promotional, Gemline, Bag Makers, Showdown Displays, and most top-50 suppliers implement the core services (PDS, Inv, PPC, OSN, OSS) reliably. Mid-market and long-tail suppliers vary - we audit coverage per supplier in week one and design graceful fallbacks for any gaps.
Do we still need SAGE / ESP for anything?
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Many distributors keep a SAGE or ESP seat or two for prospecting and discovery - finding new suppliers and product ideas. But for the day-to-day of quoting, ordering, and tracking on your active supplier roster, PromoStandards (plus a handful of direct integrations for your top suppliers) replaces it entirely.
What about suppliers who don't publish PromoStandards?
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Two options. For high-volume suppliers without PromoStandards, we build a direct integration to their proprietary API or EDI feed. For low-volume suppliers, we keep a lightweight CSV/email workflow and surface them in the same catalog UI so your team and customers don't see the seams.
How do you handle decoration, imprint specs, and artwork?
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PromoStandards OSN supports decoration line items (location, method, colors, artwork reference). We map your storefront configurator's output into the OSN decoration schema and attach artwork via URL or supplier-specific upload. Pre-flight runs in your UI so files are validated before they leave your system.
Can this run alongside our 4over, SanMar direct, and ERP integrations?
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Yes - PromoStandards is one of 30+ integrations we ship. We unify it with 4over (trade print), direct SanMar / S&S / alphabroder APIs, ERPNext / NetSuite / Pressero, and your accounting system under one ordering + reporting surface.
Do we own the code and integration?
+
100%. The PromoStandards client library, supplier adapters, sync jobs, and storefront wiring all live in your repo. We hand off documentation, monitoring, and a runbook at launch. No platform lock-in, no per-seat fees, no SaaS escape hatch.
Ready when you are
Let's scope your PromoStandards integration.
30 minutes, no slides. Bring your supplier list (or your top pain points) and we'll walk through service coverage, order flows, and a fixed-fee proposal.