Time to Market
Time to market is the total time from when a product is first conceived or sourced to when it is available for customers to purchase across sales channels.
What is Time to Market?
Time to market (TTM) refers to the length of time it takes for a product to go from initial concept, development, or sourcing through to being available for customers to purchase. In e-commerce and retail, it specifically refers to how quickly a new product can be listed and made available across all sales channels after it has been sourced or manufactured.
Reducing time to market is a critical competitive advantage — brands that get new products live faster capture early demand, establish pricing power, and build momentum ahead of competitors.
Stages That Affect Time to Market
- Product development or sourcing from suppliers
- Receiving and importing product data into the PIM or ERP
- Enriching product content (descriptions, images, attributes)
- Quality review and approval
- Publishing to all channels and marketplaces
How PIM Reduces Time to Market
A PIM system streamlines the most time-consuming stages of the product launch process. Automated data import, guided enrichment workflows, bulk publishing, and pre-configured channel templates can reduce time to market from weeks to days.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good time to market for new products?
It varies by industry. Fast fashion brands may need to go from design to live in 2 weeks. Industrial manufacturers may take months. The goal is to benchmark your current TTM and continuously reduce it.
What are the biggest bottlenecks in product time to market?
The most common bottlenecks are: waiting for supplier data, manual content creation and enrichment, approval processes, and manual republishing to each channel separately. PIM systems address all of these.