What is PromoStandards?
PromoStandards is an open data-exchange standard used by the promotional products industry. It defines a common set of web-service endpoints that suppliers, distributors, and decorators use to share product data, inventory levels, order status, and more — in real time.
Who Uses PromoStandards?
The promotional products industry includes thousands of suppliers (manufacturers) and distributors who sell branded merchandise — think custom T-shirts, promotional pens, trade-show giveaways, and corporate apparel. Organizations like PPAI and ASI support the standard, and over 100 suppliers expose PromoStandards-compliant endpoints today.
What Services Does It Cover?
PromoStandards defines several services, each covering a different part of the product lifecycle:
| Service | What It Provides |
|---|---|
| Product Data | Full product catalog — names, descriptions, images, colors, sizes, pricing tiers |
| Inventory | Real-time stock levels by warehouse and variant |
| Order Status | Tracking and status updates for placed orders |
| Order Shipment Notification | Shipment details including carrier and tracking numbers |
| Purchase Order | Programmatic order placement |
| Product Pricing & Configuration | Decoration methods, locations, charges, and imprint areas |
| Invoice | Electronic invoicing for completed orders |
The Problem: SOAP, XML, and Complexity
PromoStandards services are built on SOAP/XML — a protocol that’s powerful but difficult to work with in modern web applications. Each supplier hosts their own endpoints with slightly different implementations. Integrating directly means writing SOAP clients, handling XML parsing, managing authentication per supplier, and dealing with inconsistencies across implementations.
How PSRESTful Solves This
PSRESTful is a RESTful proxy layer that sits in front of PromoStandards. It translates every SOAP/XML call into a clean REST/JSON API. Instead of writing SOAP clients for each supplier, you make standard HTTP requests to a single API and get back JSON.
- One API key, one base URL, 100+ suppliers
- REST/JSON instead of SOAP/XML
- Consistent response formats across all suppliers
- Hosted and maintained — no infrastructure to manage
How PromoSync Brings It Into Shopify
PromoSync is a Shopify app built on top of PSRESTful. It automates the flow of data from PromoStandards suppliers into your Shopify store:
- Product Import — Search and import products from any supported supplier directly into Shopify
- Inventory Sync — Automatically keep Shopify stock levels in sync with supplier warehouses
- Pricing — Apply global markups, per-supplier discounts, or custom pricing rules
- Metafields — Populate 70+ Shopify metafields with rich product data for storefront displays and Google Merchant Center
- Theme Extensions — Add volume pricing, minimum quantity enforcement, and decoration selectors to your product pages with no code
If you’re a promotional products distributor using Shopify, PromoSync eliminates the manual work of keeping product data, inventory, and pricing up to date across suppliers.
Next Steps
- Install PromoSync and connect your PSRESTful API key
- Import your first products from a supplier
- Explore the full feature set