The Floor Covering Business to Business Association (fcB2B) unveiled its first non-EDI standard product catalog. Designed to enable suppliers who do not have an Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) infrastructure, this new tool will modernize their business and provide a standard format for product and price catalogs without having to implement the traditional fcB2B standard.

While the traditional B2B exchange remains superior, this new standard provides a comma separated values (CSV) format that matches the attributes used in the fcB2B 832 product catalog and can serve as a temporary platform as distributors and manufacturers continue to work on their long-term objectives with fcB2B.

"While we've made huge strides in achieving adoption across the supply chain with our standard, this new format will allow smaller vendors the ability to join their peers in supplying their customers with e-commerce functionality and help advance our goal of achieving industry-wide implementation," said Lewis Davis, sr. director of technology and research for the World Floorcovering Association and fcB2B. "Many vendors have struggled with understanding and implementing the traditional fcB2B standard; this will provide them a more cost-effective process."