There is an old saying in software development: “eat your own dog food.”  Maybe off-putting at first, but the sentiment holds steady. Essentially, it boils down to using the tools you build. Don’t recommend something that you wouldn’t use yourself. In today’s e-commerce space, it’s easy to propose integration services, plugins, and platforms based on their reputations alone, but have never been tested in the trenches. However, at Turn 14 Distribution, we do things differently and lean on our integration partners to help create our new powersports brand websites, leveraging our own Turn 14 Distribution application programming interface, or API.

The strategy was simple: treat our exclusive powersports brands as the ultimate high-end example of what our dealers can achieve utilizing our integration technology. But translating a massive, fast-moving warehouse catalog into a clean, front-end retail experience is a massive architectural hurdle. To pull it off without cutting corners, we needed partners who could handle the heavy lifting.

THE MEGABYTE MOVERS: DATA HERE- TO-THERE

In order for these websites to function properly, they required a digital architect who could organize the scale of this migration. For this, we turned to Jay Funnell, founder of Data Here-to-There. 

Starting in 2018, Data Here-to-There made its name in vehicle product data management and integration. The introduction of their Shop-in-a-Box solution, which provides an easily integrated e-commerce platform for shops of all sizes. By offering sophisticated catalog filtering, a frictionless implementation process, and real-time shipping calculations at checkout, they have empowered a vast network of dealers to deploy professional e-commerce platforms that leverage our API with absolute minimal friction.

Pulling raw data from our API is one thing, but shaping it into a functional e-commerce structure that can keep up with today’s shoppers’ demands is where projects fall apart. Jay’s expertise in this area became the backbone of this project. 

Turn 14 Distribution’s Senior Business Partner Integration Manager, Dan Ziegler, expanded on the partnership with Jay and Data Here-to-There:

Jay and Data Here-To-There have been long standing integration partners of Turn 14, creating the Turn 14 Distribution app for Shopify and BigCommerce. Given Data Here-To-There’s existing experience with our catalog, their custom development work they’ve completed previously for existing customers, as well as their deep integration to Turn 14, it was a no-brainer to approach them about collaborating on this new adventure. We appreciate Jay and his team’s countless hours of collaboration make our sites a successful reality

Our ongoing partnership with Data Here-to-There has been a two-way street. Because they are actively working with our live API to power our own sites, the collaboration provides our integrations team with essential, real-world feedback on product data enhancements and ideas for future changes to the API infrastructure. This takes the guesswork out of what our dealers need, since we’re experiencing the exact same process in real time.

STEPPING INTO THE MANUFACTURER’S SHOES

What might be trivial for our partner brands turned out to be one of the first major challenges of this project: how do we handle our own product data? As a distributor, we spent decades utilizing the provided product data to adapt within our API. While strides have been made to programs within the industry to streamline product information, ensuring consistency remains a huge undertaking. In this instance, however, we set the bar high for product data. This project marked the first time we assumed the role of the manufacturer ourselves, managing product data for product lines from ProTaper, Kuryakyn, Answer Racing, BikeMaster, Biker’s Choice, and plenty more. It forced us to turn around and question the quality of our own data with a much more critical eye.

Data Here-to-There’s guidance was integral in this process. They sat in on meetings with our product data, brand management, and marketing teams to collaborate on how to turn their vision, combined with our data, into reality. Their input guided our efforts to handle things the right way from day one, building clean, high-quality data structures that translate perfectly to e-commerce. Over time, we plan to expand this perspective, applying the hard lessons learned from our own brands to our entire master catalog and the incoming data from our external vendors as we begin to manage more brand data in-house.

THE PROVING GROUNDS FOR COMPLEX ATTRIBUTES

While the Turn 14 Distribution API already successfully handles an immense volume of data across multiple markets, it has historically lacked variant attributes that are integral, specifically in the powersports world, like specific sizes and color options. Since these options weren’t historically supported, this migration provided a live proving ground for refining this type of complex product data to ensure that it operates seamlessly once it becomes available on our API.

Part of creating these new sites also gave us the opportunity to work on optimizing the complex nature of variant mapping. Partnering with Jay and Data Here-to-There was instrumental to formulating this product data for us to provide to our dealer network as these features roll out. Once available, this will increase the robustness of the data available for our dealers and expand our systems for future partner suppliers.

As we continue to use and learn from these platforms, our integrations team seeks ways to apply this level of customization across our current and future partner suppliers. With the necessary data provided, additional variant data could be implemented across their product lines.

REAL-WORLD SOLUTIONS FOR THE DEALER NETWORK

The tools we used to build our brand sites were deliberately chosen because they integrated with Turn 14’s systems the way our customers expect for their online platforms. We did not use enterprise-level custom software that a standard Turn 14 dealer could never afford. In fact, Data Here-to-There created a Turn 14 App for an efficient solution to managing online storefronts and business operations. Dealers can easily update product listings, automate pricing changes, and shift live inventory across our distribution network, all through a one portal.

While our API handles the automated order fulfillment seamlessly, a site is useless if a customer cannot find the exact part that fits their vehicle. To provide that roadmap, we pulled in Convermax, another long-time integration partner. Convermax provides a powerful year, make, model search plugin that has since become the go-to option for dealers that need a simple access point to Turn 14’s extensive fitment database. Dealers can connect to our fitment data without ever having to run an import/export process; just input your API keys, and it just works.

Their year, make, and model search plugin has become the go-to option for our dealers who want a plug-and-play solution that utilizes our massive fitment database.

Alex Shcherbachev, CEO of Convermax, highlighted why this relationship works:

We’ve worked with Turn14 for more than five years, and they’ve been one of the best distributors we’ve partnered with. When you connect Turn14 with Convermax, search, filters, fitment, inventory, and catalog data all work together seamlessly. This helps auto parts merchants get their stores up and running faster. Data is one of the biggest challenges in auto parts e-commerce. The quality of the Year Make Model search depends on the data in the store. Most distributors only provide inventory feeds and price lists, but Turn14 goes beyond that by providing both product and fitment data through its API, which is rare. After years of using Turn 14’s API, we haven’t had any major downtime or reliability issues. Onboarding shared clients is simple: just enter the API token pair and start syncing data. From my experience working with dozens of fitment data sources, this level of stability and simplicity is hard to find in this industry.

UNLOCK THE POWER OF THE API

Building our own brand sites was both the ultimate test of our integration partners and our commitment to treating our customers as royalty. Being a leader in the industry is more than a bottom line; it’s about ensuring we innovate and streamline our tools while collaborating with the best in the industry to support our dealers. This undertaking put us through the same process, using the same foundation as our dealers, which gave us a first-hand understanding of how to improve. We ate our own dog food, and we think you should try it, too. 

If you are a Turn 14 Distribution dealer and ready to stop managing spreadsheets and start using our data to its fullest potential on your own website, contact apisupport@turn14.com to discuss how you may be able to automate your eCommerce business.