Automated B2B Catalog Sync for a Swiss Promotional Products Store
connecting the Makito API to PrestaShop for AMC Pub

Context: AMC Pub and the Makito catalog

AMC Pub is a Swiss agency specializing in promotional and advertising products, based in Domdidier in the canton of Fribourg. They offer their clients — companies and staff associations — a wide range of customizable items: branded pens, printed textiles, corporate goodies and more, with over 2,000 products in their catalog.

Their online store is available at amc-pub.ch. The website design and development were not carried out by d-side solutions; our contribution is limited to the catalog synchronization tool described in this article.

Their main supplier, Makito (matiko.es), is a European B2B wholesaler of promotional products with a comprehensive REST API providing programmatic access to their entire catalog: products, variants (colors, sizes), pricing tiers, stock levels and images.

The challenge: a static, outdated and broken catalog

In early 2024, the Makito catalog had been imported once into AMC Pub's PrestaShop store through a manual process. Since then, no updates had been performed. The result:

• ✗Stale prices — Pricing had not been updated since the initial import, creating discrepancies with actual supplier rates.
• ✗Broken images — Many product images had disappeared or stopped displaying, giving the store an abandoned feel.
• ✗Poor descriptions — Product texts were generic, with no SEO optimization or calls to action, limiting the store's search engine visibility.
• ✗Incorrect stock levels — Displayed quantities no longer reflected supplier reality, leading to orders that couldn't be fulfilled.
• ✗No automation — Every update required manual intervention, time-consuming and error-prone.

The solution: an API bridge between Makito and PrestaShop

d-side solutions designed and built a dedicated Symfony CLI application for automated synchronization of the Makito catalog into AMC Pub's PrestaShop store. The tool connects to the supplier's REST API, retrieves all product data, and pushes it into PrestaShop via its XML WebService API.

The application runs entirely from the command line, with no graphical interface — it is designed to be executed manually or via scheduled tasks (cron). Each command is self-contained and can be resumed after interruption thanks to a built-in resume mode.

Technical approach

Rather than a one-off CSV import, d-side chose an API-to-API architecture: the application queries the Makito API directly for each product, retrieves multilingual data (French and German), enriches it with SEO descriptions, then pushes it to PrestaShop. A local JSON intermediate storage serves as a cache and allows tracking the synchronization state of every product.

Key features

Automated supplier catalog crawling

The tool traverses the entire Makito catalog via its REST API, retrieving for each product: names and descriptions in French and German, categories, variants (colors and sizes), tiered pricing, stock quantities and all available images. A built-in rate limiting and automatic retry system ensures reliable operation even across a catalog of several thousand references.

Full PrestaShop synchronization

Each product is created or updated in PrestaShop with its combinations (color/size variants), images, stock levels and prices. Categories and attributes are automatically created if they don't yet exist in the store. Multilingual content is injected into PrestaShop's French and German fields.

SEO descriptions and calls to action

• ✓Structured headings with relevant keywords (product name + "with promotional logo").
• ✓"Why choose" and "Customization" sections to guide the buyer.
• ✓Calls to action linking directly to amc-pub.ch for ordering.
• ✓Meta title, meta description and keywords generated automatically for every product.

Price and stock management

Prices are fetched based on the pricing tier configured by AMC Pub, then a commercial margin is applied automatically. Stock levels can be synchronized separately, enabling frequent updates without re-crawling the entire catalog.

Quality and maintenance tools

Dedicated commands detect and fix products with anomalies: zero prices, missing images, orphaned products. An audit mode scans the PrestaShop store to identify these issues and automatically corrects them from the Makito source.

Results: a living, high-performing catalog

• ✓Over 2,000 products synchronized with their variants, images and up-to-date prices.
• ✓Bilingual FR / DE content automatically retrieved and enriched for every product.
• ✓Improved SEO — structured descriptions, optimized meta tags and calls to action on every product page.
• ✓Restored images — all product images downloaded from source and uploaded into PrestaShop.
• ✓Stock and prices updatable anytime with a single command, no manual intervention required.
• ✓Guaranteed data quality — automatic detection and correction of anomalies (zero prices, missing images).