My take and thoughts from a post over on the EDI-L Yahoo group about the type of data to provide to a Catalog service. There's a lot of "push" these days - and has been for years? - about Electronic Catalogs.   Many of the bigger networks/VANs have a catalog service (Inovis & SPS Commerce come to mind) and there are probably more offered out there by companies - big and small - EDI network or not - that can house that data and provide it to your customer base. This is where you, as a vendor/supplier/manufacturer, can store your product information data - colors, sizes, UPCs, style numbers, descriptions, and more - that can then be accessed by your buyers - the retailers and resellers - for their systems.  Some of the information is used by the end user and some is not. Then on the flip side - there's Me - the retailer.  I subscribe to the catalog service provider (in My case - Inovis) and look to that data for product information.  In our case, we're pretty much only looking to verify the Style Number and UPC information.  Since we decided LONG AGO to not use the NRF size or color codes, that information is irrelevant to us.  Also, we tend to use our own item ...