Shotfarm Partners With SPS Commerce to Provide Web-Ready Product Content to the Retail Universe (SM) Community

Online, December 1, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Shotfarm, the first industry-centralized standard for product image management and exchange, announces a partnership with SPS Commerce to provide product images and information to the supply chain management solution company's Retail Universe SM online community.

The Retail Universe is a free online community that connects thousands of members of the retail supply chain, allowing organizations to engage with new business partners and expand their e-commerce or retail store businesses. In partnering with shotfarm, the Retail Universe will enable retailers to identify and buy products that are web-ready, with all necessary product images, content and specification immediately available for download.

"One of the biggest challenges retailers face is gathering all of the pieces of content that are needed to put a product on an e-commerce website," says Mike Lapchick, Founder and CEO of shotfarm. "Shotfarm was initially developed to eliminate this inefficiency by providing web content for all products in a single, centralized location. Now, by incorporating our content directly into the merchandising workflow of the Retail Universe, we're able to speed that time to market even father upstream." Suppliers who update their Retail Universe profiles to include such product images and information from shotfarm gain a significant competitive advantage as retailers put more emphasis on web-ready content as a necessary component of the buying process.

Shotfarm's rapidly growing Product Image Exchange platform, which has more than tripled its membership in the last six months, makes the company the ideal source to provide vendor content to the Retail Universe. "Our manufacturer members are already using shotfarm to solve their image management and distribution needs to existing partners; the Retail Universe now provides an outlet to put that content in front of new retail customers and use it to grow their business", says Lapchick. Retail members of the shotfarm community will also benefit from this partnership as the shotfarm image library grows with the addition of product assets from the thousands of manufacturers in SPS Commerce's customer base.

"With the Retail Universe, SPS Commerce is transforming the way retailers think about merchandising their sites and shotfarm is excited to contribute to making this new wave of e-commerce technology possible," concludes Lapchick.

For more information or to join the shotfarm community, visit www.shotfarm.com.