The Margins Problem in B2B Distribution
A manufacturer with 50 supplier partners receives product feeds in three different formats: XML from the largest suppliers, CSV exports from mid-size ones, and manual spreadsheets from the smallest. Each feed arrives on a different schedule — daily, weekly, or "whenever someone remembers." Prices change without notice. Stock levels are stale by the time they reach the online store. The manufacturer sets margins by hand in a spreadsheet, calculates selling prices, uploads them to the webshop, and hopes nothing changed in the meantime.
This is not an edge case. It is the default state of B2B e-commerce for most small and mid-size manufacturers and distributors in the EU. The tools exist — ERP systems, PIM platforms, e-commerce suites — but they are built for enterprises with dedicated IT teams and five-figure software budgets. A manufacturer with 20 employees selling industrial parts through a webshop does not have the resources to implement SAP or Shopify Plus with custom integrations.
The result is margin leakage. Selling prices are based on outdated supplier costs. Manual processes introduce errors — wrong prices, incorrect stock levels, missing products. And nobody has real-time visibility into actual profit per order because the data lives in three separate systems that do not talk to each other.
What SimpaShop Automates
SimpaShop is a B2B e-commerce platform built specifically for manufacturers and distributors who sell products from multiple suppliers. It automates the three most error-prone parts of the business: product imports, margin management, and order fulfillment.
Partner Product Imports
SimpaShop connects to supplier data feeds — XML, CSV, or API — and imports products, prices, and stock levels on a configurable schedule. When a supplier updates their catalog, the changes flow into SimpaShop automatically. Products appear, disappear, or update based on supplier data without manual intervention.
The import system handles the common problems that plague manual processes. Duplicate products are detected and merged. Category mappings translate supplier categories into your store structure. Price fields are normalized — some suppliers use net prices, others use gross, some include VAT, some do not. SimpaShop normalizes all of this during import so your storefront shows consistent, correct pricing regardless of how the supplier formats their data.
Margin Management and Pricing
Margins are where most B2B distributors lose money without realizing it. A 15% margin on a product that costs EUR 50 should yield a selling price of EUR 58.82. But if the supplier raises the cost to EUR 55 and nobody updates the margin calculation, the selling price stays at EUR 58.82 — and the margin drops from 15% to 6.5%. Over hundreds of products, this compounds into serious revenue loss.
SimpaShop calculates margins in real-time. When a supplier price changes, the system recalculates the selling price based on the configured margin. Margins can be set per partner, per product category, or per individual product — giving the distributor fine-grained control over their pricing strategy. If a supplier raises prices by 8%, the distributor can see exactly how that affects every product in the catalog before deciding whether to absorb the increase or pass it on.
Order Fulfillment and Label Printing
When an order comes in, SimpaShop handles the fulfillment workflow. Shipping labels are printed automatically based on carrier integrations. Tracking numbers are generated and communicated to the buyer. The order moves from "received" to "shipped" without a human copying tracking numbers between systems.
For accounting, invoice data and financial reports export in formats compatible with popular accounting software across the EU. This eliminates the manual data entry that typically happens between the webshop and the accountant's system — a process that is both slow and error-prone.
Profit Analytics: Per Order, Per Product, Per Partner
The most valuable feature in SimpaShop is the profit analytics dashboard. Most e-commerce platforms show revenue — how much you sold. SimpaShop shows profit — how much you actually made after supplier costs, shipping, and platform fees.
This is calculated in real-time, per order. You can see which products are genuinely profitable and which ones are losing money because of supplier price increases that were not reflected in selling prices. You can compare partners — which supplier relationships generate the best margins, which ones are eroding your profitability. You can identify the products that sell in volume but make no money, and the niche products with low sales volume but high margins that deserve more visibility.
This level of visibility changes how a distributor makes decisions. Instead of guessing which products to promote or which suppliers to renegotiate with, the data is there in real-time, broken down by every dimension that matters.
Built on Fimula Platform
SimpaShop runs on the Fimula Platform, which means two things that matter for B2B e-commerce. First, data sovereignty — your product catalog, customer data, order history, and financial records are stored in your own PostgreSQL database (Fimula Core tier) or in an isolated partition of a shared database (Fimula Lite tier). Either way, your data stays in the EU, under your control. No third-party marketplace has access to your supplier relationships, your pricing strategy, or your customer list.
Second, the BYO (Bring Your Own) infrastructure model. You provide the PostgreSQL database and S3-compatible storage. Fimula provides the application code and platform services. This means you are not locked into a specific hosting provider, and you can migrate your data at any time. For a manufacturer who has been burned by vendor lock-in with previous e-commerce solutions, this is not a minor detail — it is a decision criterion.
Who SimpaShop Is Built For
SimpaShop targets a specific profile: manufacturers and distributors in the EU who sell products from multiple suppliers through a B2B webshop. Typical customers are industrial parts distributors, building materials suppliers, electronics component sellers, and wholesale companies that aggregate products from multiple sources.
The common thread is that these businesses sit between suppliers and buyers. They do not manufacture what they sell, but they add value through curation, logistics, and customer relationships. Their competitive advantage is not the products themselves — it is the service layer around the products: availability, fast shipping, technical support, and competitive pricing. SimpaShop automates the operational work so these businesses can focus on the service layer that actually differentiates them.
If you are running a B2B distribution business and managing supplier data in spreadsheets, take a look at SimpaShop.