The Day a Store Clerk Answered Me With His Phone

From my desk today

This one didn't happen at my desk. It happened in a store, on my own time.

I was shopping and torn between two products. So I did what shoppers are supposed to do: I asked for help.

"What can you tell me about these two items?"

The young man helping me didn't hesitate. He pulled out his phone and looked up the product specs on the store's own website.

I knew most shoppers check online before they ever walk into a store. That's not news.

What fascinated me was seeing that the staff rely on that same online information too.

And when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The website is where the specs, the photos and the details live. Nobody can memorize thousands of products.

Which means the product data behind that website isn't just an e-commerce detail. It's what your shoppers read. And it's what your staff read.

The retailer reality

Every product you sell has a digital twin: its UPC, its MPN, its title, its description, its photos and its specs.

When that twin is complete and correct, everything downstream works. The product shows up in search. The customer finds the right model. The clerk can answer the question in ten seconds.

When it's wrong or missing, things break quietly:

• A wrong UPC, and the product can't be matched or found.
• A missing MPN, and nobody can tell two similar models apart.
• A thin description, and the shopper moves on to a competitor whose listing answers the question.
• No photos, and the product barely exists online.

None of these mistakes makes noise. They just cost you sales you'll never see.

Behind the scenes at Randmar

That clerk's phone only helped because someone, somewhere, did the data work first. Here's how we do it.

It starts at onboarding.

Before a manufacturer's product goes live with us, we require several fields, including:

Key fields every product needs before it goes live

• ✔ Product titleIt's what shoppers search for and what staff read first
• ✔ DescriptionIt answers the question before anyone has to ask
• ✔ MSRPIt sets the reference price for the market
• ✔ MAPIt protects every reseller's advertised price
• ✔ UPCIt lets systems, scanners and marketplaces match the exact product
• ✔ MPNIt tells similar models apart
• ✔ PicturesWithout them, the product barely exists online

Source: Randmar manufacturer onboarding requirements.

Then we check and standardize.

Manufacturers don't all send data the same way. So we check and standardize UPCs, MPNs, titles, specs and images before anything is listed. The goal is simple: the same product looks the same, and reads the same, everywhere it's sold.

Then we enrich it.

When the content is thin, we don't just pass it along. We enrich it, using AI tools and our own team, so the listing answers the questions shoppers and staff actually ask.

Why it matters.

Shoppers check online first

75%

research products online before buying in-store

80%

of Canadians compare prices online

• 75% of consumers research products online before buying in-store.
• 80% of Canadians compare prices online during the holiday season.

What it means for you: your product data is your first salesperson. For most shoppers, and, as I learned, for many store staff too.

Sources: commercetools, The Omnichannel Playbook (2026), citing Capital One Shopping (75%); Retail Council of Canada × Leger, 2025 Holiday Shopping Survey (80%).

Your turn

When your staff need product details on the floor, where do they look first?