One canonical catalog.
Catalogue Hub is the source of truth your multi-store Shopify operation has been missing. One canonical record per SKU. Real-time bidirectional sync to every connected store via GraphQL + webhooks. Per-store overrides without data duplication. Variant Manager that handles the 2,048-variant matrices Shopify import chokes on. Every other product in Apimio — Quality Guard, Sale Scheduler, Supplier Bridge, Trade Portal — reads from here.
The Catalogue Hub footprint
Numbers from production deployments running on Catalogue Hub today — across furniture, fashion, beauty, and home décor multi-store operations.
What breaks without a canonical record
Operators running 2+ Shopify stores hit the same four problems in the same order. Catalogue Hub is the answer to each — not a workaround. Here's the failure mode and the corresponding mechanism.
How it fails today
What Catalogue Hub does about it
Sync drift across stores
You edit a product in Shopify admin for Store A. Webhooks fire. Store B never receives them (third-party sync app missed a retry). By the time you notice, the dealer has called and the customer has reviewed. Most "real-time" sync apps are actually polling on a 5-minute cadence — that's your drift window every single hour.
Webhook-driven sync with retry + dead-letter queue
Catalogue Hub subscribes to Shopify's native product/variant/inventory webhooks per store. Every event is processed through a durable queue with exponential backoff and dead-letter handling. If Shopify is unreachable for 15 minutes, the queue catches up automatically when it returns — in the original event order. Drift is structurally impossible.
Duplicated SKUs to fake per-store pricing
You need $99 in Store A and €89 in Store B. Shopify admin alone forces a duplicate SKU per store. Two SKUs means two inventory records, two product pages, two sets of metafields. The duplicate fans out across reports, integrations, and forecasts until nobody trusts the numbers.
Per-store overrides, one canonical SKU
One canonical product record holds the base attributes. A per-store override layer holds the deltas — price, copy framing, visibility, channel rules. Inventory, metafields, and reporting all roll up to the canonical SKU. Different prices per store. Same product. Same source of truth.
Variant matrices that break Shopify import
Furniture, fashion, and bespoke product categories regularly hit the 100/250/2,048 Shopify variant ceilings. Shopify admin's CSV import silently truncates. Custom apps choke on the GraphQL pagination. Your product goes live with half its sizes missing — and you find out from a refund request.
Variant Manager built for 2,048-variant matrices
Catalogue Hub's Variant Manager handles the full Shopify ceiling natively — paginated GraphQL writes, bulk variant operations, option set composition. Editing a 200-variant sofa across 3 stores is one operation, not 600. Imports validate the matrix before any write reaches Shopify.
No audit trail when something goes wrong
A price across 12 stores accidentally drops 30%. Who changed it? When? From which integration? In Shopify admin alone, the answer is "we don't know" — there's no per-attribute audit. By the time you've rolled back, the day's margin is gone.
Per-attribute audit log with rollback
Every write — manual, API, integration, sync, AI — is captured in a per-attribute audit log: who, when, from where, before/after value. A bad mass-update is one click to roll back. SOC-grade audit trails for B2B + finance teams.
The six capabilities, in detail
Each capability below is what you actually click on inside the Apimio dashboard. Read the bullets — they describe the operational behavior, not marketing-speak.
Real-time bidirectional sync
Webhook-driven sync from Shopify to Catalogue Hub and back, on every product, variant, inventory, metafield, and image event. Not polling. Not batch. Webhook events trigger writes within seconds.
- Webhook subscriptions registered per store at OAuth time
- Durable queue with exponential backoff and dead-letter retry
- Event ordering preserved per resource (no out-of-order writes)
- Conflict resolution: last-write-wins with audit trail and rollback
- Network resilience: queue catches up when Shopify recovers
- Per-resource sync status visible in the Activity Log
Per-store overrides without duplication
Override layer sits on top of the canonical record. Override only the fields that differ — Apimio merges the canonical + override at write time. No duplicate SKUs, no fan-out across reporting.
- Price, compare-at-price, currency per store
- Title, description, SEO fields per store/locale
- Visibility (hide a product from one store, show it in another)
- Channel rules (online store + POS + custom apps)
- Per-store tags, collections, vendor field
- Override diff view shows exactly what differs from canonical
Variant Manager for large matrices
Built for furniture, fashion, beauty, and bespoke catalogs that hit Shopify's variant ceilings. Up to 2,048 variants per product on Shopify 2024-04+ APIs. Bulk operations across the matrix.
- Up to 2,048 variants per product (full Shopify ceiling)
- Option set composition: size × color × material, etc.
- Bulk variant create, update, archive via productSet API
- Inventory propagation across variants and stores in one write
- Variant-level SKU + barcode + weight + cost attributes
- Pre-write validation against Shopify schema (no half-imports)
Bulk operations across stores
Edit hundreds of products across multiple stores in one operation. Built on Shopify's Bulk Operations API where possible; falls back to fault-tolerant queued writes for cross-store fan-out.
- Bulk Price Update with per-store override layering
- Bulk metafield update across hundreds of products
- Bulk image reorder + alt text update
- Cross-store fan-out (one canonical edit → N store writes)
- Progress tracking + failed-row retry in the Activity Log
- Fault tolerance: if Shopify hiccups, the queue catches up
Markets-native multi-language
Translations are stored as structured fields against the canonical record — not as duplicated products. Shopify Markets ingests them natively. Switching markets in Apimio surfaces the right copy automatically.
- Per-locale title, description, SEO, and metafields
- Market-specific price + compare-at-price (with currency)
- AI-assisted translation via Apimio AI (review-in-loop)
- Locale-specific image alt text (accessibility + local SEO)
- Markets routing rules: language by domain, country, geo
- Bulk translation operations across product groups
Audit log + activity history
Every write captured: source (manual / API / AI / sync), actor, timestamp, before/after value, target store. Required for B2B + finance trust. Required for rollback when an integration misbehaves.
- Per-attribute write trail (price, title, inventory, etc.)
- Source attribution: manual, API key, Apimio AI, sync, import
- Before/after diff with one-click rollback per attribute
- CSV export for finance reconciliation + SOC audits
- Filter by actor, store, date range, attribute, source
- Retention: full history per workspace (no truncation)
Five steps from install to a single source of truth
From the Shopify App Store install to the first cross-store edit propagating in real time. Most teams complete steps 1–3 in the first two hours. Steps 4–5 unfold as you scale.
Install + OAuth (30 seconds)
Standard Shopify App Store install. OAuth grants the scopes Catalogue Hub needs for product/variant/inventory/metafield read+write and webhook registration. No API keys to paste, no Postman, no curl.
First sync — your catalog comes in
Apimio pulls your existing Shopify catalog into Catalogue Hub via paginated GraphQL bulk operations. Products, variants, inventory levels, images, and metafields all flow in. The Activity Log shows progress per resource. Most catalogs (≤5,000 SKUs) complete in under 10 minutes.
Connect store 2 (and 3, 4, 5…)
Each additional store is OAuth + add — Apimio recognizes shared SKUs and merges them against the canonical record. Per-store override panel surfaces immediately. Shopify Plus organizations connect via the Organization Admin API, no per-store reauthorization.
First bulk operation
Run your first Bulk Price Update across hundreds of products in multiple stores. The override layer applies per store, the queue fans out the writes, the Activity Log shows progress and any failed rows for retry. The 4-hour manual sync ritual ends here.
Continuous sync, no manual intervention
From step 5 onward, every edit — in Apimio, in Shopify admin, via API, from a supplier import, from Apimio AI — flows through the same canonical record and out to every connected store in real time. The catalog operates itself.
Operational outcomes from week 1 forward
Not abstract ROI. The specific operational changes teams report in their first 30 days running on Catalogue Hub.
Friday-afternoon sync ritual ends
The 1–2 hour weekly task of pushing edits across stores manually disappears. The first reclaimed hours go into the work that was always being deferred — alt text, descriptions, dealer outreach.
New stores cost ≈ zero engineering time
Adding store 3, 4, 5 is a configuration toggle, not a re-implementation. International expansion via Shopify Markets becomes a settings change, not a platform decision.
Audit trail closes the finance trust gap
B2B + finance teams stop chasing "who changed this price?" Every write is attributable, with one-click rollback. SOC reviewers see what they need without ticket archaeology.
Variant matrices stop blocking launches
The 250-variant chair that used to need a custom CSV gymnastics session goes live in one operation. Furniture, fashion, beauty teams get their full catalogs onto Shopify without truncation.
Markets translations stop being a project
Adding a new locale is structured fields on the canonical record, not a separate Shopify store. Apimio AI generates first-draft translations; reviewers approve in-place. New markets ship in days, not quarters.
Every other Apimio product just works
Quality Guard scores, Sale Scheduler runs, Supplier Bridge imports, Trade Portal publishes — all reading from the same canonical Catalogue Hub. Adding a new product in Apimio is configuration, not migration.
Catalogue Hub vs Shopify admin, sync-only apps, and generic PIMs
How Catalogue Hub specifically compares to the three approaches teams usually try first. Row by row, no marketing fluff.
Shopify admin | Syncio / sync apps | Best for multi-store Catalogue Hub | Akeneo / Salsify | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canonical product record (one source of truth) | ||||
| Real-time bidirectional sync | Polling (5-min) | Webhook-driven (sub-second) | Batch only | |
| Per-store overrides (no SKU duplication) | ||||
| Variant matrix support | Up to 100/250 default | Up to 2,048 (full ceiling) | Unlimited (but not Shopify-tuned) | |
| Markets-native translations | Multi-locale | |||
| Per-attribute audit log + rollback | ||||
| Plus Organization Admin (8+ stores no per-store OAuth) | ||||
| Implementation timeline | Day 1 (bundled) | Day 1 | Day 1 (30-sec install) | 3–6 months |
Questions from teams evaluating Catalogue Hub
The questions we get most often from operations teams already running Shopify at scale. If yours isn't here, book a 20-minute walkthrough.
At OAuth, Catalogue Hub subscribes to Shopify's native product, variant, inventory, metafield, and media webhooks per store. Every event lands in a durable queue with exponential backoff and a dead-letter side-channel. Writes from Apimio to Shopify use the same queue model so manual edits in the Apimio dashboard and edits in Shopify admin both follow the same path. Sub-second propagation on healthy networks; minutes during Shopify-side incidents; never lost.
Last-write-wins at the attribute level, with full audit trail of every contender write. The losing write is captured in the audit log with its source attribution so you can review and roll back if needed. For per-attribute concurrent writes (e.g., two operators editing the same description), Catalogue Hub uses ETags + If-Match where the underlying API supports it to fail the second write rather than silently overwrite.
Each canonical product has an override panel per connected store. Override only the fields that differ — price, compare-at-price, title, description, SEO, visibility, channel rules. Apimio merges canonical + override at write time. The diff view shows side-by-side: canonical value vs override value vs Shopify-live value for that store. One click reverts an override back to canonical.
The queue persists. Failed writes are retried with exponential backoff. If Shopify's API is unreachable for an extended period, the queue catches up in the original event order when it returns. The Activity Log surfaces "Queued — waiting on Shopify" status so you know nothing is lost. We haven't lost a write yet — and Shopify outages are public, traceable, and short.
Yes — that's the core override pattern. The canonical SKU holds the base price; per-store override holds the deltas. Shopify sees the merged price for each connected store, but Apimio reports, inventory, and integrations all roll up to the single canonical SKU. Currency conversion via Shopify Markets is handled at write time per-locale.
Up to 2,048 variants per product — the full Shopify ceiling on the 2024-04 GraphQL Admin API. Variant Manager uses productSet mutations and bulk operations to keep these matrices manageable. Bulk variant create/update/archive are paginated and validated against the Shopify schema before any write reaches your stores, so you never get a half-imported matrix.
No — Catalogue Hub recognizes Shopify Plus Organization Admin natively. One OAuth grant at the organization level surfaces every store in the org for connection. Adding a new store inside the org becomes a configuration toggle in Apimio. Teams running 8+ stores on Plus never reauthorize per-store.
No. First sync is read-only from Shopify into Catalogue Hub. Your existing Shopify product data is the starting source of truth. Bidirectional sync only activates after first sync completes and you've had a chance to review what's in the Hub. No automatic writes back to Shopify until you explicitly opt in.
Every other product in Apimio reads from Catalogue Hub. Quality Guard scores products from the canonical record. Sale Scheduler reads canonical price + applies discounts per scope. Supplier Bridge writes new products through the canonical record (so quality + sync apply automatically). Trade Portal publishes the canonical record subset per dealer. Apimio AI generates content against canonical attributes. Catalogue Hub is the foundation — adopt it first, the others compound.
Make Catalogue Hub your source of truth
Install on Shopify, watch your catalog flow into Catalogue Hub within minutes, and connect store 2 the same day. The 14-day trial includes the full feature set — overrides, Variant Manager, bulk operations, audit log, Markets translations. No credit card required.