Product information management

A PIM is the system where product data is authored, organized, translated, and prepared for publishing. It holds product titles, descriptions, images, attributes, specifications, categorizations, variants, related products, and any other information about a product that needs to be consistent everywhere it appears. A PIM is not where products are sold. It is where product data becomes production-ready before flowing to the channels that sell it. ## Why a PIM is separate from the commerce platform A commerce platform can hold product data. Most do. But when a merchant sells the same product on a website, in a physical store, on marketplaces, through B2B partner portals, and in printed catalogs, each channel needs the same product described consistently. Managing product data in the commerce platform means the platform becomes the source of truth for other channels that were never designed to consume its data model. A PIM separates authoring from selling. Product managers, category managers, and translators work in the PIM. Enriched, validated, translated product data flows from the PIM to the commerce platform, marketplace connectors, and any other channel. The commerce platform stops being the awkward middle layer between product data and shoppers. ## What a PIM actually manages A well-set-up PIM handles product data at scale. Attributes and specifications with typed values (weight, dimensions, colors, materials, certifications). Category assignments and taxonomies. Translated content per market. Media assets (product images, video, technical drawings, safety data sheets) with variants for different uses. Relationships between products (accessories, replacements, upsells). Approval workflows so data cannot be published until it meets a quality bar. Localization rules for pricing, availability, and copy per market. Without a PIM, all of this either lives in the commerce platform (which usually has weaker tools for this than a dedicated PIM) or in spreadsheets and shared drives, which does not scale. ## Common PIM products Common PIM products include Akeneo (open-source and enterprise SaaS, French origin), Pimcore (open-source), inRiver (Swedish, strong in Nordic B2B), Salsify, Contentserv, and Riversand. Norce ships some product data management capability inside the commerce platform itself, which is enough for many merchants but often not enough at multi-market or complex B2B scale. ## PIM vs headless CMS vs commerce platform The three overlap but do different work. A headless CMS manages marketing content: landing pages, blog posts, campaigns. The commerce platform manages the transactional side: pricing, inventory, orders. The PIM manages the product data itself: what a product is, how it is described, how it is categorized, how it is localized. In a well-designed stack, product data flows PIM -> commerce platform -> frontend, while marketing content flows CMS -> frontend directly. ## How Frntkey relates Frntkey does not include a PIM. It renders whatever product data the commerce backend exposes through its Storefront API. If the merchant runs a PIM, the PIM feeds the commerce platform (Norce, Shopware, or another) and Frntkey reads from the commerce platform. If no separate PIM exists, product data lives in the commerce backend and Frntkey reads it from there. The frontend does not care where the data was authored. It cares that the data is present, consistent, and available through the API. ## Related terms Headless commerce · ERP integration · Headless CMS · Ecommerce frontend