[mrweasel]

May ten years ago, at my former employer, where we would have loved to have this API, we also needed a PIM. At that time the commercially available ones was where all pretty terrible or way to expensive (mostly both) and a colleague was tasked with just building one. He did a much better job than any of the off the shelf solutions we had seen. It still needed data to be manually entered for new product and descriptions done for seven or eight language.

I still see a huge value proposition in an API that can lookup production information based on barcodes alone. Scan the item when it first arrives in the warehouse, or when a PO is made and just suck down the relevant information. You could even tier the offering: Tier 1: you get title and one image, Tier 2: Five images and product attributes. Tier 3: All images, attributes and product descriptions. Then add a fee for every language you need translations for.

If you could do this right, then it is my belief that it could change a number of industries. Technically it's not even that hard, but there's a ton of manual work involved, contract with every manufacturer on the planet and insane QA.