If you distribute products to other businesses, you know the challenge. Your range changes. Prices shift. New products arrive. Yet your customers still need something to browse, something to share with their team, and something to refer back to before they commit to buying.<\/p>\n
At Onsight, we believe the best way to handle this is digitally. We’d much rather see sales reps using the Onsight app to show customers the latest products, accurate pricing, and up-to-date product information while they are selling. It gives them access to live information and lets them move directly from showing products to placing an order. Or customers can use the app themselves to browse the catalogue and place orders on their own. The app updates itself constantly as product and pricing changes come in.<\/p>\n
But we also found that many of our clients still like having a PDF catalogue. They like forwarding it to customers or colleagues, or keeping it handy for later. So rather than seeing PDF catalogues as an alternative to digital sales ordering, we see them as a useful companion to it.<\/p>\n
We think the limitations of the traditional printed catalogue are fairly clear. Printing a full product catalogue is expensive. You pay for design and print runs, then pay again to deliver them. And by the time it lands on a customer’s desk, some of it may already be out of date. A price has changed, a line is out of stock, or a new product isn’t in there.<\/p>\n
When that happens, you can’t simply update a page. You’re dealing with another print run, more costs, and another delay. That’s why so many distributors have moved away from print: the printed version is too slow and too expensive to keep current. This post on the printed sales catalogue<\/a> looks at that shift in more detail.<\/p>\n The PDF fills a gap that neither the old printed catalogue nor a sales ordering app completely fills. It costs virtually nothing to distribute. You can generate a new version whenever you need one. And your customer can open it on a laptop, tablet, or phone without needing to install anything or log in.<\/p>\n For many of the wholesale distributors using Onsight, the PDF catalogue isn’t a one-off document produced once a season. It’s a recurring sales tool. They can generate new versions as stock changes, prices are updated, promotions start, or new products arrive. <\/p>\n A buyer may not be ready to place an order while speaking to a sales rep. They may want to circulate the range to colleagues, compare products later, or send a catalogue on to someone else in the business. A PDF is very good at that. That’s where PDF catalogues make the most sense: as a regularly refreshed extension of live selling.<\/p>\n This is where PDFs become much more useful. If you sell to different types of buyers, one general catalogue often doesn’t work. A buyer on a standard price list shouldn’t necessarily see the pricing you’ve agreed with your largest account. And a customer who only purchases from one part of your range doesn’t need to scroll through thousands of products they’ll never order. Customer-specific catalogues solve this.<\/p>\n In Onsight, you can generate a separate PDF for each buyer, showing the products relevant to them at the prices you’ve agreed with them. The catalogue feels more personal, and it makes the buying decision easier for whoever is reading it. A sales rep can then walk into a meeting with a catalogue that looks as though it was made specifically for that customer. And if the rep is using Onsight during the meeting as well, they can leave the customer a tailored PDF and still use the live app to present products and place the order.<\/p>\n In the Onsight web console, you can choose a customer before generating your PDF, and the system will apply that customer’s pricing, discounts, and product availability automatically. The guide on generating a PDF for a specific customer<\/a> shows you exactly how to do this.<\/p>\n Most of the distributors we see generating PDF catalogues today aren’t printing them. They’re emailing them, sharing them through messaging apps, or making them available for customers to download. That means the catalogue needs to be designed for a screen. You don’t need the same image resolution you would need for high-quality printing. In fact, an unnecessarily large PDF can become a disadvantage. It can take longer to download, use more mobile data, and be awkward to open on a phone or tablet. The goal is simple: clean product images, a file that opens quickly, a layout that’s easy to browse, and text that’s readable without constant zooming.<\/p>\n We don’t think distributors need to choose between a sales ordering app and a PDF catalogue. We think they do different jobs. When you’re actively selling, we want the app to be the primary tool. It can show current products and prices, give the sales rep the information they need, and allow them to create the order there and then. When the customer wants something they can browse later, circulate internally, download, or print, the PDF is still hard to beat.<\/p>\n That’s why PDF catalogues have survived even as printed catalogues have declined. They’re cheap to produce, quick to distribute, familiar to buyers, and flexible enough to personalise for individual customers. Used alongside a digital sales ordering system, rather than instead of one, they can be a very practical part of the wholesale sales process.<\/p>\n \nOnsight lets your sales team use the app to present products, customer-specific pricing, and product information while taking orders. It also lets you generate PDF catalogues for your full product range or a specific category, all with customer-specific pricing. If you’d like to see how the two can work together, sign up for a free trial<\/a>.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you distribute products to other businesses, you know the challenge. Your range changes. Prices shift. New products arrive. Yet your customers still need something to browse, something to share with their team, and something to refer back to before…<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8225"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8234,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8225\/revisions\/8234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Why PDF catalogues are still in active use<\/h2>\n
One catalogue doesn’t fit every customer<\/h2>\n
Designing for a screen, not a printer<\/h2>\n
The sales app and the catalogue PDF do different jobs<\/h2>\n