A supplier-by-supplier read of the parts catalog — and where it leads.
This is a real EKOM catalog analysis, with the client's identity removed. The client is a performance-automotive parts distributor — turbo, diesel, and performance parts sourced from multiple supplier feeds. EKOM read the catalog the way a distributor catalog is actually built: supplier by supplier. Every product shares the same fields, but completeness and quality vary by the supplier whose feed each product came from. Reading each brand's feed on its own surfaced 81 distinct data-quality issues — and, more importantly, the systemic ones: whole-feed gaps a blended scan would scatter into noise.
Standard catalog validation checks whether a field is populated, not whether its value is correct. A turbo can pass every completeness check while its description names the wrong engine, its barcode doesn't match its part number, or its Prop 65 status reads "Unknown." EKOM's resolution layer reads structure and meaning together, supplier by supplier — which is why these surface here rather than reaching a buyer or a marketplace feed.
The weight is in severity: 26 issues are critical and live now. Many issues span more than one theme, so theme counts are approximate.
| Supplier | Findings | Representative issue |
|---|---|---|
| HKS | 14 | Fitment IDs blank on every item; Prop 65 "Unknown" across the line. |
| BD Diesel | 13 | New active items missing stock status, fitment, description, and Prop 65. |
| BorgWarner | 11 | Part numbers in the barcode field; marketing copy blank across the line. |
| Forced Performance | 10 | Barcode ≠ part number (transposition); Prop 65 "Unknown" on every item. |
| ACL | 10 | Bearings whose descriptions name the wrong engine; missing barcodes. |
| Garrett | 8 | 27 assembly kits with malformed IDs and no born-on date. |
| Wehrli | 8 | Two parts with descriptions exactly swapped; a Steel part called "Aluminum." |
| Industrial Injection | 7 | Fitment IDs missing on 107 of 110 items. |
| Theme | ~Count | Who feels it |
|---|---|---|
| Miscategorization (parts filed under the wrong type) | ~15 | Buyers |
| Compliance gaps (Prop 65 "Unknown", missing CARB EO) | ~14 | Compliance + channels |
| Malformed / mismatched identifiers (barcode ≠ part #) | ~12 | Ops + channels |
| Fitment blind spots (missing vehicle fitment IDs) | ~12 | Buyers |
| Wrong, swapped, or wrong-engine descriptions | ~10 | Buyers |
| Missing barcodes / EDI syndication blockers (ACES/PIES) | ~10 | Retail channels |
| Missing or placeholder content & images | ~8 | Buyers |
The issues most likely to cost a return, a rejected feed, or compliance exposure — live in the catalog now.
Prop 65 reads Unknown on every item for Forced Performance, HKS, Industrial Injection, and BD Diesel's new items — non-compliant for California sale and grounds for rejection by major marketplaces. CARB-approved items across HKS and Garrett are missing the required CARB EO number, and some catback items are flagged both CARB-approved and requiring acknowledgement — a contradiction on a regulated part.
Vehicle fitment IDs are blank for all HKS items and 107 of 110 Industrial Injection items — so they never appear when a buyer searches by year, make, and model, which is how auto parts are actually shopped. The part is in the catalog, in stock, correctly priced — and unfindable by the person who needs it.
A Forced Performance turbo's barcode doesn't match its part number (a two-digit transposition, repeated on a related drop-ship item); several brands store the MFR part number in the barcode field instead of a valid UPC; 27 Garrett kits carry malformed "G"-suffix IDs; and Autocare Brand IDs are blank across Forced Performance — blocking ACES/PIES EDI syndication.
In a distributor catalog, the most serious problems are systemic to a single supplier's feed — and a blended scan hides exactly that.
It's also what makes the fix precise. Once you can see that a defect is a whole-feed pattern rather than a scattering of one-offs, the correction is a rule applied to that supplier's intake — not a manual pass over hundreds of records. Reading supplier by supplier is what makes both the pattern and its remedy legible.
Why supplier-specific problems surface here rather than averaging away in a whole-catalog scan.
A single blended scan of a distributor catalog reports "mostly complete" and misses that one supplier's entire feed has no fitment. Reading each feed in full is how a whole-brand Prop 65 gap, or 27 kits sharing a malformed ID, gets caught instead of buried — and it's what makes the next step precise: EKOM knows exactly which fields each supplier's feed is missing, so the enrichment targets the right gaps.
The read in this report is the first phase. The same supplier-by-supplier understanding that surfaced these findings is what powers the work that follows — turning a diagnosed catalog into one that sells across fitment search, marketplaces, and EDI without friction.
This is EKOM's second pass on the same automotive-parts catalog first analyzed earlier. The input did not change — the method did. The first pass read the catalog against the target data architecture it was meant to feed — checking each record against itself and against the fitment/PIES schema, which the analysis needed as context. This pass required no schema and no manual setup: the pipeline profiled the catalog on its own, recognized that quality tracks with each product's supplier feed, chose to partition by supplier, and read each feed in full context — surfacing 81 distinct, severity-ranked defects across eight supplier lines. Same catalog, read without a schema and organized the way it's actually built, with nothing configured by hand.