Where electrical distributors get product data: IDEA, IDW, ETIM
Electrical distributors get manufacturer content from IDEA Connector (the IDW), then fill gaps with ETIM feeds, manufacturer portals and content providers.
Electrical distributors get much of their manufacturer product content from IDEA's syndication platform, IDEA Connector (called the Industry Data Warehouse, or IDW, until 2018), where manufacturers load item data, pricing, images and spec sheets once and authorized distributors pull it into their ERP and ecommerce systems. They fill the rest from manufacturer portals and APIs, ETIM-classified feeds, GS1 GDSN data pools, and paid content providers that normalize and enrich the data.
That is the short answer. The longer one is about what each channel actually carries, and where all of them stop.
IDEA and the Industry Data Warehouse (IDW)
IDEA describes itself as the joint venture of NAED, NEMA, and NEMRA, which is why it sits at the center of the North American electrical channel. It runs three things a distributor touches: a data syndication platform, a set of data standards, and an EDI network.
IDW is the name many people in the trade still use, even though IDEA renamed the IDW to IDEA Connector, and IDX to IDEA Exchange, in March 2018. (On IDEA's current site, "IDW" now refers to a separate sales-alert product, IDEA Data Whispers, so check which one a vendor means.) In 2016 NAED formally endorsed the IDW as the preferred source of manufacturer product and pricing information for its members. In October 2014 IDEA raised the bar on what a listing had to contain, mandating 43 critical data fields for new items from February 2015 and for all active items by October 2015.
IDEA's current site describes the platform as IDEA Connector. Per that page, it carries descriptions, spec sheets, high-resolution images, pricing, videos, packaging and volumetrics, 360-degree images and certification agency data, offers 500+ fields, and says new items can sync to authorized distributor systems within 24 hours. IDEA also states that 80 of the Top 100 distributors do business with IDEA.
So when someone asks "what is IDW data," the practical answer is: the manufacturer-submitted item record, with pricing, in IDEA's standard format, that lands in your item master when you subscribe to that manufacturer.
The standards underneath: IDEA specs, UNSPSC, ETIM and EDI
A feed is only as useful as the structure it arrives in. IDEA publishes several data standards: a Classification Attribute Specification based on UNSPSC, a Product Attribute Specification that templates how product data is exchanged, EDIPro guidelines built on ANSI X12, and net-price exchange methods. The same page notes IDEA is working with NEMA and NAED on a Harmonized Data Model meant to unify these.
Transactions run separately. IDEA Exchange is IDEA's EDI service for manufacturers and distributors. EDI moves the purchase order, invoice and price file; it does not move a rich product page.
ETIM North America and electrical product classification
ETIM, the Electrotechnical Information Model, is an international classification standard used in over 20 countries. ETIM North America was founded by DDS (Distributor Data Solutions) and handles translation of the model into North American English, French Canadian and Mexican Spanish. The organization names members including manufacturers such as Schneider Electric, ABB, Siemens, Eaton and Legrand, and distributors such as Sonepar, WESCO and Rexel.
The model is what makes ETIM useful to an operator. Every product class sits in one group, each class has a fixed set of features, and per the ETIM model documentation features come in four types: alphanumeric with a fixed list of possible values, logical yes/no, numeric, and range. Classes, features, values and units all carry language-independent codes.
In practice a class like circuit breaker tells you which features to expect (think pole count, rated current, tripping characteristic) and constrains the values, so "2P", "2-pole" and "double pole" stop being three different facets on your site. ETIM tells you what fields a class should have. It does not fill them.
GS1 GDSN for electrical product data
GDSN tends to matter most for electrical items that also sell through retail and home-center channels, where GTIN-based exchange is the norm. GS1 describes the mechanism in five steps: suppliers align data to GS1 standards such as the GTIN, upload it to a certified source data pool, the pool registers the item in the GS1 Global Registry, recipients subscribe through their own data pool, and the two pools then synchronize continuously. It is a GTIN-keyed publish-and-subscribe network, strong on identity, dimensions and packaging, and only as deep on technical attributes as the supplier's submission.
Manufacturer portals and APIs: Legrand, Eaton and others
Large manufacturers also publish directly. Legrand's customer portals page points partners to a myLegrand partner account login and lists resource types including cut sheets, spec sheets, CAD and Visio drawings, BIM objects, catalogs and installation instructions. Access and scope sit behind the partner login, so confirm what your account can download.
Eaton takes a multi-channel approach. Its product data syndication page lists partners including 1WorldSync, GfK Etilize, Icecat, IDEA and D-Tools. With that many paths for one brand, ask your Eaton rep which feed is the system of record for your account before wiring up a second one.
The pattern across manufacturers is the same: the portal is authoritative for that brand, but every brand formats it differently, so 40 portals means 40 mappings.
Content providers that sit between the two
The third channel is paid services. A 2018 Electrical Wholesaling overview names IDEA alongside Trade Service, Unilog (which started out helping distributors format, normalize and customize content, and partnered with Affiliated Distributors on an enriched data subscription) and DDS. DDS's own electrical page describes sitting between manufacturers and downstream systems, delivering structured product data into ERP, PIM and ecommerce platforms, and answers "No" to whether it replaces a PIM or ERP.
The same Electrical Wholesaling piece quotes a Unilog executive saying a distributor may start with just 15,000 SKUs that can make up 85 to 90 percent of its sales. That is the head of the catalog. The tail is where it gets hard.
| Source | What it gives you | What it usually does not |
|---|---|---|
| IDEA Connector (IDW) | Manufacturer-submitted item, pricing, images, docs in one standard format | Data for brands that don't subscribe; attributes the manufacturer left blank |
| ETIM | The field list and allowed values per class | The values themselves |
| GS1 GDSN | GTIN-keyed identity, dimensions, packaging | Deep electrical specs unless the supplier sent them |
| Manufacturer portals and APIs | Authoritative brand content | A shared format across brands |
| Content providers | Normalized, subscribed content | Content your competitors can't also buy |
How electrical distributors manage product data: what the shared feed leaves for you
Three gaps tend to survive any subscription.
Everyone gets the same content. If you and the branch across town both pull a manufacturer's IDEA record, your product pages start identical. Search engines and AI assistants have little reason to prefer yours. We wrote up the mechanics in the shared content pool trap.
Long-tail attributes stay empty. Small manufacturers, private label, older SKUs and regional brands often aren't in the pool, or are there with a description and a price and little else. ETIM can tell you which features a wire connector class should carry, such as the wire sizes it accepts; it does not supply the values. For illustration, a 60,000-SKU catalog where 45,000 items arrive complete still leaves 15,000 items to research; at 20 minutes each that is 5,000 hours of spec-sheet reading.
Feed data is not channel-ready copy. A record built for an ERP often has a short, abbreviated description and a pricing unit. Your website needs facet values that match your taxonomy, a readable title, and bullets a contractor can scan.
This is where the "who does the work" question lands. Your PIM stores the data. Anglera does the work: it pulls values from the actual spec sheets, catalogs and manufacturer pages, maps them to your ETIM or in-house schema, scores each value, and flags conflicts between, say, the IDEA record and the current cut sheet for review rather than guessing. It works alongside IDEA Connector, your PIM and your ERP; see how Anglera fits next to IDEA Connector and the electrical distributors page.
How to decide what to subscribe to and what to build
Start with IDEA Connector for every manufacturer that publishes there; it is the channel's default and it carries pricing. Adopt ETIM classes as your target schema even if you keep your own navigation on top. Use direct manufacturer feeds for your top lines where the brand's own content is richer than its IDEA record. Then measure fill rate by class on the attributes your site filters on, and treat the gap as ongoing work rather than a one-time cleanup, because manufacturers keep revising spec sheets and adding SKUs. If you are still choosing where that data should live, our PIM guide for electrical distributors and the 2026 electrical data outlook cover the system side.
IDEA, ETIM and manufacturer portals give every electrical distributor the same starting record. Anglera works on top of that record, backfilling the long-tail attributes from source documents and keeping them current, with implementation typically taking about 30 days.