Three standards that shape B2B product data exchange in Europe — and why understanding them matters if you sell to trade partners or through wholesale channels.
When a manufacturer sells products to 50 retail partners, each partner needs the same data — but may need it in a different format, with different attribute names, and organized according to different category structures. Without standards, every data exchange becomes a custom project. With standards, data can be exchanged automatically, validated against a common schema, and understood by any system that supports the standard.
In the DACH B2B space, three standards dominate product data exchange: GDSN, ETIM, and ECLASS. Each serves a different industry segment and solves a different part of the data exchange challenge.
GDSN — Global Data Synchronization Network — is the GS1 global standard for exchanging product master data between trading partners. GS1 is the international standards organization behind barcodes, GTINs (Global Trade Item Numbers), and the EAN system familiar from retail.
GDSN works through a network of certified data pools. A manufacturer publishes product data to a certified data pool (like 1WorldSync or Salsify), and retail trading partners subscribe to that data through their own certified pool. When the manufacturer updates a product, the change propagates automatically to all subscribers.
Who uses GDSN: Primarily large consumer goods manufacturers (food, household products, personal care) and their retail partners — major supermarket chains, drug store chains, and hypermarkets. In Germany, REWE, Edeka, dm, and similar chains are active GDSN participants. If you supply branded goods to large German retailers, your trading partners likely require GDSN compliance.
ETIM — Electro-Technical Information Model — is the international standard for classifying and describing electrical, electronic, and related technical products. It defines a standardized set of product classes (like "luminaire", "cable", "circuit breaker") and for each class, a defined set of attributes with standardized value lists.
This standardization solves a concrete problem in the electrical trade: a cable has specific properties — cross-section, number of conductors, insulation material, voltage rating — that need to be described consistently across manufacturers and distributors. Without ETIM, every manufacturer uses different attribute names and different value formats. With ETIM, a wholesale distributor can compare cables from Siemens, Schneider, and ABB using the same attributes.
Who uses ETIM: Electrical wholesale distributors, manufacturers of electrical installation materials, lighting, cable and wiring, switchgear, and related products. In Germany, major electrical wholesalers like Sonepar, Rexel, and Hagemeyer are among the primary ETIM adopters.
ETIM versions are regularly updated — ETIM 8 and ETIM 9 are the current versions as of 2025. New product classes are added, and existing class definitions are refined with each release.
ECLASS is a hierarchical product and service classification standard designed for cross-industry use. Unlike ETIM (focused on electrical products) or BMEcat (a data exchange format), ECLASS is a classification taxonomy — it defines how to categorize and describe products across virtually any industry.
ECLASS uses a four-level hierarchy: segments, main groups, groups, and commodity classes. Each class has a unique identifier and a defined set of attributes (called "properties" in ECLASS terminology). For example, a standard for describing an industrial pump will specify which attributes — flow rate, pressure rating, material, connection type — should always be present and how they should be measured.
Who uses ECLASS: Manufacturing industries (mechanical engineering, automotive supply, chemicals, construction), B2B procurement portals, and public sector procurement. ECLASS is commonly used in SAP-based procurement environments. Companies in the manufacturing sector that need to exchange product data with customers running SAP or similar ERP systems will frequently encounter ECLASS requirements.
In practice, these standards determine how you need to structure and export your product data when dealing with specific trading partners or channels:
The challenge is that maintaining product data simultaneously in multiple formats — ETIM for wholesale, BMEcat for other partners, GDSN for retail chains, your own shop format, and Amazon flat files — quickly becomes unmanageable without proper tools.
Productbay's PIM platform is built to handle the complexity of multiple data standards without requiring manual reformatting for each partner. Product data is maintained once, in a structured central repository. The integration and export layer then generates the correct format for each partner or channel — whether that is an ETIM-compliant data file for a wholesale distributor, a BMEcat export for a B2B portal, or a channel-specific Amazon flat file.
For suppliers who receive data in ETIM or ECLASS format from manufacturers and need to transform it before distributing to their own customers, Productbay's import capabilities handle the inbound mapping as well. The goal is always the same: you maintain product truth once, and the system handles format translations automatically.
Productbay supports ETIM, ECLASS, BMEcat, and custom B2B formats — import from any standard, export to any partner. Book a free demo.
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