Why we open the pricing API as an industry standard
A short note on why a public API and a documented standard beat closed proprietary models — especially in a fragmented market.
For a long time, pricing data in the auto parts industry was a closed zone. Every large distributor built its own pricer, its own import pipeline, its own cross-reference model.
We believe this is a dead end. Fragmentation slows everyone down: manufacturers cannot ship a price change quickly, shops receive stale data, customers pay a markup on inefficiency.
iPricer and Catalog are built as publicly documented APIs with a transparent model. Any developer can integrate a shop in a week rather than a year.
Standardization is not a threat to competition — it is a precondition. When the base layer is open, competition shifts to UX quality, support, analytics, inventory — the things customers actually value.
This is not charity. We have a strategic interest in spreading the Datamotor standard across the industry — the wider the network, the more durable the infrastructure role.