Catalogued. Priced live.Wired in.

The operational backbone of the catalogue surface inside Specifi. Every product an integrator quotes, orders, or installs comes from a supplier (a manufacturer or a distributor); the suppliers surface is how those suppliers wire into the platform so their products end up in your proposals, your purchase orders, your inventory module, your invoicing, and your project-margin views without anyone re-keying SKUs and cost-basis lines between five different tools.

There are two paths a supplier can take into your account. Affiliated suppliers (manufacturers and distributors signed up to the Specifi Supplier Portal) manage their own product catalogue, live trade pricing, images, datasheets, and specifications through the portal feed; the integrator side picks the updates up automatically. Non-affiliated suppliers join your account as private supplier records sourced from pricelists you upload (PDF, Excel, CSV); the integrator side carries the product data with the same surface, just sourced from your-side data instead of from the supplier-published feed.

Affiliated suppliers are on the Specifi Supplier Portal. They have a supplier-side login, maintain their own product catalogue, publish live trade pricing across the integrator network, upload product images and datasheets, and collaborate with integrators on specific projects directly through the portal. They also get anonymous specification analytics back from the network: which SKUs are being specified, where demand is concentrated. Updates flow through to every connected integrator on the next catalogue refresh.

Non-affiliated suppliers aren't on the portal. They're private supplier records on a single integrator's account, built from pricelists the integrator uploads (PDF, Excel, CSV). Pricing carries a "last verified" date stamp so you can sense-check ageing pricelists before they end up on a proposal. The data stays private to your account.

The integrator-side experience is identical for both: search, drag into a proposal, split across a PO, receive into inventory, post against project margin. The difference is who maintains the data, not what you can do with it.

Selected major AV distributors are affiliated and live on the Specifi Supplier Portal feed today. The named list of affiliated distributors varies by region (UK, US, IE, CA, AU, NZ) and is not published on the public marketing site at this stage. If the AV distributors and manufacturers your business sources from most are a hard requirement for your evaluation, ask during the demo: we share the canonical regional list under the discovery call rather than over the public FAQ.

The number of affiliated suppliers grows over time as new manufacturers and distributors sign up to the Supplier Portal. From 2026-06-01, with the inventory module ship, the procurement-side connection extends to every connected supplier in addition to the catalogue and pricing flow that runs today.

Yes. Non-affiliated suppliers join your account as private supplier records with the same in-product surface as affiliated suppliers, just with the data sourced from pricelists you upload instead of from the Supplier Portal feed. Send us your supplier's pricelist (PDF, Excel, CSV); we handle the data import, build the per-supplier product library on your account, set up the per-supplier cost-basis + RRP pricing with last-verified date stamps, capture the supplier's payment terms metadata, and add the supplier's contact details. POs raised against a non-affiliated supplier go through the email + PDF + matched-reply-tracking-ID workflow (the same workflow most AV-distributor relationships have always used; the difference is the integrator-side admin retires).

If your business runs on a long tail of niche suppliers (custom-cabling specialists, regional furniture brands, one-off lighting fabricators) outside the big-box distributor coverage, the platform does not penalise that pattern: a non-affiliated supplier is a fully-fledged supplier inside Specifi, just maintained from your side rather than from the supplier side.

Affiliated suppliers publish their trade pricing through the Specifi Supplier Portal. When a price changes (a manufacturer raises trade pricing across an SKU range, a distributor adjusts a margin band on a brand line, a one-off promotional adjustment on a seasonal SKU), the integrator side sees the updated figure in the catalogue, the proposal builder, and the PO surface on the next catalogue refresh.

The cost basis on a draft proposal does NOT silently update mid-edit (so the proposal you started on Monday at one cost basis does not surprise-shift on Wednesday); instead, the platform flags pricing-changes-since-draft on the review screen so the integrator can decide whether to refresh the proposal to current pricing or hold to the cost basis the proposal was started against. On a signed proposal, the cost basis is locked from the date of signature; supplier price changes after signature are absorbed by the integrator unless renegotiated against the client through the change-order flow.

Yes, completely. Every integrator's negotiated trade pricing is private to that integrator's account. No other integrator on the Specifi network sees what you have negotiated with a given supplier. The Supplier Portal feed publishes per-integrator-tier pricing where the supplier maintains tier-band pricing, and your account-specific pricing (whether base-tier or negotiated-better-than-base) is visible only to your account.

This is a hard guarantee, not a configurable setting. The platform was built with the assumption that trade-pricing confidentiality is non-negotiable for any AV integrator who has spent years building a relationship with a distributor; if it weren't private, the network would not work.

The Supplier Portal is the supplier-side surface of the Specifi platform. Manufacturers and distributors signed up to the portal manage their product catalogue, pricing, images, datasheets, and specifications from one screen. The flows the portal supports today: bulk product-data import from supplier-side ERP systems, per-integrator-tier pricing maintenance, image and datasheet upload, specification publishing, supplier-side analytics on which SKUs are getting specified across the integrator network (anonymous: the supplier sees specification rates by SKU and category, NOT individual integrator project-level data), and integrator-network announcements (a new product line, a price-list refresh, a stocking-issue advisory).

The portal is independent of the integrator-side product. A supplier can sign up to the Supplier Portal without any of their integrator customers also being on Specifi (although the network effect kicks in once both sides are on the platform).

Yes. The catalogue carries product-to-supplier mapping at proposal time, not retroactively at PO time, which is what makes multi-supplier sourcing usable in practice. A single product (a £620 Bose amplifier, 12 metres of CAT6 cable, a 4-channel power conditioner) can be linked to multiple supplier records, each with its own cost basis, lead time, and stock availability state.

At proposal time, the integrator picks which supplier to source from on a per-line basis (or accepts the platform's default-supplier suggestion based on cost basis and stock availability). At PO time, Specifi splits the BOM across the chosen suppliers automatically. At inventory-receipt time, goods are reconciled against the right supplier's PO. Switching a line from supplier A to supplier B mid-project is a one-field change on the proposal record; the cost basis, the PO, and the project-margin view update on the change.

Two different surfaces tied to the same underlying product data. **Brands** ([/brands](/brands)) is the catalogue-landing public-facing surface showing the manufacturer brands integrators specify on Specifi day-to-day (Control4, Crestron, Lutron, Sonance, Origin Acoustics, KEF, Sonos, JBL, and dozens more). The /brands page is "what brands can I quote?" answered for an evaluation-stage prospect.

**Suppliers** (this page) is the operational-side surface showing how integrators connect with the distributors who supply those brands. The /suppliers page is "how does the integration with my distributors work?" answered for an integrator who is already evaluating Specifi as their operating platform. A single brand (e.g., Lutron lighting control) typically gets supplied by multiple distributors (Lutron-direct in the US, regional distributors in the UK and AU); the suppliers surface is where the distributor-by-distributor data feed lives.

Most integrator-side workflows touch both: a proposal carries products from a brand, sourced through a supplier; a PO is raised against the supplier carrying products from the brand. The data model is one catalogue; the surfaces are two pages because the two questions are different.

Yes. Ask Bob in plain English: "Which connected suppliers carry this SKU in stock?", "What did we buy from this supplier last quarter?", "How much have we spent with this distributor year to date?" Bob reads from the live supplier catalogue, cost-basis ledger, and usage history, and answers in seconds.

Bob is read-only on suppliers today, with one exception: Bob can request a supplier connection on your behalf, which the supplier confirms from their side before the link goes live.

Included on every Specifi plan. No AI surcharge, no per-prompt token cost.

Nothing extra. Included on every Specifi plan: Individual, Team, Company, all-region. No per-supplier-connection fee for affiliated suppliers (the Supplier Portal feed is free for the integrator). No per-product-import surcharge for non-affiliated suppliers (we handle the pricelist import as part of standard onboarding). No per-pricelist-update charge for refreshing a non-affiliated supplier's data when their pricelist changes. No premium-tier upgrade gating multi-supplier sourcing comparison or the Bob the AI suppliers surface.

The only fees that touch the integrator-supplier relationship are between you and the supplier: a distributor's small-order surcharge on a PO under the supplier's minimum order value, a freight charge on an expedited shipment, a re-stocking fee on a return. Specifi captures and posts those transparently to the project margin view but does not surcharge them on the platform side.

If you are an AV manufacturer or distributor and want to put your product catalogue, live trade pricing, images, datasheets, and specifications in front of the Specifi integrator network, contact the suppliers team through the [contact-us](/contact-us) page with your business details and a brief description of your product catalogue (brand portfolio, SKU count, geographic coverage, integrator-network focus). We onboard new affiliated suppliers periodically as bandwidth allows.

The Supplier Portal feed is free to suppliers who join it; the value exchange is reach (your products in front of every Specifi integrator) plus anonymous specification analytics (you see which SKUs are getting traction across the network without any individual integrator giving up project-level data). There is no listing fee, no commission on integrator-side POs, no take-a-cut model on the trade-pricing transactions that flow between an integrator and the supplier.