260 Automotive Aftermarket Brands Updated Their Product Data in Just 45 Days — Is Your Catalog Keeping Up?

The automotive aftermarket moves fast — and so does the data behind it.

On September 28, 2026, SEMA Data reported that 260 automotive aftermarket brands updated their product information within just 45 days. Of those, 88 were brands recognized by SEMA Data for Data Excellence.

Those updates can include far more than a few revised product descriptions. According to SEMA Data, manufacturers may be adding new part numbers, discontinuing existing products, changing pricing, adding new vehicle applications, improving images, updating descriptions and correcting product attributes.

For an automotive ecommerce retailer, that raises an important question:

Is your online catalog actually keeping up?

Automotive Product Data Is Never Really “Finished”

One of the biggest misconceptions about launching an automotive ecommerce website is that product data is something you import once.

Download an ACES and PIES file, load the products into the website and you're finished.

In reality, that is only the beginning.

Manufacturers are constantly introducing new products, expanding vehicle applications, correcting fitment information, improving images and descriptions, changing product attributes and retiring older part numbers.

And the latest SEMA Data numbers show just how frequently that happens.

The September report wasn't an isolated event. On August 31, SEMA Data reported that 277 brands had updated their data during the preceding 45 days, including changes to applications, attributes, descriptions, images and other product information.

When hundreds of brands are changing their data within a matter of weeks, maintaining a large automotive catalog manually becomes nearly impossible.

What Happens When Your Catalog Falls Behind?

Outdated catalog data can create problems that customers notice immediately.

A manufacturer may release a new product, but it never appears on your website.

A part may gain applications for additional vehicles, but customers searching those vehicles never see it.

A discontinued product may remain available for purchase.

An updated product image or description may never reach your store.

Or, perhaps most importantly in automotive ecommerce, vehicle fitment information may change while the retailer continues using an older version of the data.

SEMA Data specifically warns that outdated product information can result in incorrect listings, missed new products, discontinued items remaining for sale, inaccurate pricing and additional cleanup for retailers.

For a traditional ecommerce store selling a few hundred products, some of those changes might be manageable manually.

For an automotive retailer selling tens of thousands — or hundreds of thousands — of parts across hundreds of brands, it is a completely different problem.

ACES and PIES Make Automotive Ecommerce Possible — But the Data Still Has to Move

The automotive aftermarket has an enormous advantage over many industries: standardized product-data formats.

ACES provides standardized vehicle application and fitment information.

PIES provides standardized product information such as descriptions, dimensions, attributes, pricing information, digital assets and other product details.

Organizations such as SEMA Data, as well as other automotive data providers, help manufacturers distribute that information to authorized retailers.

But having access to ACES and PIES data is only part of the equation.

The retailer still needs a system capable of receiving it, processing it and continuously updating the ecommerce catalog when manufacturers make changes.

That is where automation becomes critical.

SEMA Data itself encourages retailers to automate product and fitment files on a schedule or when data changes, use APIs, and take advantage of its Brand Change Log to identify newly added products, discontinued products and pricing changes.

This Is Why Parts Square Was Built Around Data Synchronization

Parts Square approaches automotive ecommerce differently from a traditional general-purpose ecommerce platform.

Instead of treating automotive data as something that gets imported into a website once, Parts Square is designed around continuously connected automotive product data.

Parts Square works with automotive data sources and manufacturer data to synchronize ACES and PIES information into the platform. When a retailer has its own account or brand authorization with a supported data provider, Parts Square can connect that data source directly into the retailer's catalog.

That means retailers don't need to manually download enormous automotive data files, restructure them for a conventional ecommerce platform and repeatedly re-import them every time manufacturers make changes.

Parts Square handles the infrastructure required to turn that data into an ecommerce experience customers can actually shop.

That includes:

  • Year, Make and Model vehicle lookup

  • Vehicle-specific product fitment

  • Product specifications and attributes

  • Manufacturer descriptions and images

  • Application notes

  • Brand and category navigation

  • Automotive-specific search

  • VIN lookup

  • Product catalog updates

And product data is only one half of the equation.

Parts Square can also connect to automotive warehouse distributors to receive current inventory, pricing and availability information.

The result is a website that combines manufacturer catalog data with distributor inventory data instead of forcing the retailer to maintain either one manually.

A Product Catalog and an Inventory Feed Are Not the Same Thing

This distinction is especially important in the automotive aftermarket.

A distributor inventory feed might tell you:

Part ABC123 — 7 available — $84.50 cost

But that information alone doesn't tell a customer what the product is, what vehicles it fits, what it looks like or why they should buy it.

Manufacturer product data provides that context.

It can supply the product description, images, specifications, vehicle applications, dimensions, features, installation information and other attributes needed to create a useful ecommerce listing.

An effective automotive ecommerce system therefore has to bring together two constantly changing sources of information:

Catalog data: What is the product and what does it fit?

Inventory data: Who has it, how many are available and what does it cost?

Both can change every day.

260 Brands in 45 Days Puts the Scale of the Problem Into Perspective

It is easy to underestimate automotive catalog maintenance until you look at the numbers.

If only a handful of manufacturers updated their catalogs every few months, manually managing those updates might be realistic.

But 260 brands changing product data in 45 days demonstrates the scale of modern aftermarket ecommerce.

And those changes don't stop once a website launches.

Tomorrow another manufacturer can introduce new SKUs.

Next week another can update vehicle applications.

Another can discontinue a product line.

Another can replace its product photography.

Another can correct an attribute or description.

A serious automotive ecommerce catalog is a living data system.

It has to be treated like one.

The Future of Automotive Ecommerce Is Connected

The most scalable automotive retailers won't be the ones with employees downloading spreadsheets and manually maintaining thousands of product listings.

They will increasingly rely on connected systems that allow manufacturers, data providers, distributors and ecommerce platforms to exchange information automatically.

That is the philosophy behind Parts Square.

Connect the manufacturer data. Connect the distributors. Keep the catalog synchronized. Then give the retailer the tools to actually sell the products.

SEMA Data's latest numbers are a useful reminder of just how much information is moving behind the scenes in the automotive aftermarket.

For retailers, the question is no longer simply whether they can get access to automotive product data.

The more important question is:

What happens after the data changes?

With hundreds of brands updating their catalogs in a matter of weeks, the answer needs to be automation.