The Return to Documentation Discipline
March 12, 2026 · 11 min read
Your products are invisible. We make them findable.
Plait & Pattern helps industrial distributors and manufacturers recover lost revenue by fixing the data architecture and operational workflows that make products unfindable.
30 minutes. No pitch. Just clarity on whether we can help.
The growth strategy is working. The infrastructure isn't.
You've invested in digital. A better website. A search platform. Maybe a PIM. Customers still can't find what they need—and you can't figure out why.
Most customer service calls are product questions.
Buyers can't find products that exist in your catalog—so they call. Or they leave. Your best reps are doing support work your website should handle.
30-60% of your catalog may generate zero views.
Products you've paid to source, warehouse, and merchandise—invisible to search. Inventory you own but can't sell.
Every acquisition compounds the data debt.
New catalogs. New naming conventions. New systems to reconcile. The integration backlog grows faster than your team can clear it—and PE firms evaluating platforms notice which ones have their data in order.
AI initiatives fail—or worse, hallucinate.
75% of B2B organizations are piloting AI search. 95% of AI projects fail to deliver ROI. The common denominator: data that can't support the algorithms.
These aren't separate problems. They're symptoms of one: your product data wasn't designed for the scale you're operating at now. Gartner estimates poor data quality costs organizations $12.9 million annually. For a distributor on 3-5% margins, that's not inefficiency—it's existential.
Plait & Pattern fixes the system, not just the symptoms.
The window is closing
The next generation of B2B commerce won't be browsed—it will be queried. AI procurement agents are already executing purchasing logic: 'Find all brass valves with pressure rating above 600 PSI, lead-free certification, and availability within 48 hours.'
If your product is missing the pressure rating attribute, it isn't ranked lower. It's mathematically excluded. It doesn't exist.
Meanwhile, Amazon Business has captured over $33 billion with competitive pricing, fast fulfillment, and deep integration into procurement workflows. You won't beat them on convenience. You beat them by making your technical expertise and product depth findable—something a horizontal marketplace can't replicate.
A generation of leaders who expect self-service is taking over. The organizations that fix their data architecture now will own customer relationships for the next decade. The ones that don't will become invisible to the systems—and the people—that increasingly mediate B2B purchasing.
How we work
Every engagement starts with understanding your specific situation. But most organizations follow a similar path—and knowing where you are determines where to start.
Rapid Diagnostic
Validate the problem
$7,500 · Two weeks
A focused analysis identifying your top data quality issues and their revenue impact. The fastest path to clarity.
Start here if: You suspect product data is costing you revenue but need validation before a larger commitment.
Root Cause Diagnostic
Understand root causes
$25,000 · 3-4 weeks
A comprehensive audit of the systems, incentives, and workflows that drive your product data quality—with a prioritized remediation roadmap.
Start here if: You know something's broken and need to understand why it keeps breaking.
Strategic Partnership
Execute the transformation
$8,500/month · 6-month minimum
Ongoing strategic oversight for organizations implementing data governance transformation. Senior expertise without the full-time hire.
Start here if: You have a roadmap and need experienced guidance to execute it.
Built on 20 years of doing this work
I spent seven years at Zoro watching a $500M business grow past $1 billion—and watching our product catalog scale from 2 million SKUs to 14 million. That growth exposed what most distributors don't talk about openly: the systems that work at 2 million SKUs collapse completely at scale.
Before Zoro, I learned information architecture for technical products at McMaster-Carr, one of the industry's most respected organizations for catalog design.
I've seen what breaks, in what order, at what scale. That pattern recognition is what I bring to every engagement.
More about my background
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Wondering if your product data is costing you revenue?
Let's find out. A 30-minute conversation will give you clarity on whether Plait & Pattern can help—and if not, I'll point you toward someone who can.