B2B Product Catalogues for Distributors: Structure, Specs and Formats

Most distributors who represent several international manufacturers end up with the same problem: a folder of supplier catalogues, each with its own layout, units, language and logic, and a sales team that forwards whichever PDF it can find first. The buyer on the other end, usually an engineer, a procurement officer or a contractor’s purchasing team, then has to do the work of comparing products across documents that were never meant to sit side by side.

A catalogue that you own, built around your full range rather than around each principal, fixes that. This guide sets out how to structure it, how to standardise the specifications, how to handle Arabic and English in dense tables, why prices belong in a separate dated document, and how to produce the three versions sales teams actually use. It is written for marketing managers, sales directors and owners of distribution businesses in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt with a few hundred SKUs or more.

Start by separating three documents

Many catalogue projects stall because one document is being asked to do three jobs. Before any layout work, agree which document carries which information.

The catalogue summarises; the data sheet proves; the price list commits. Once these roles are fixed, the catalogue can stay accurate for months, because the two things that change fastest, detailed specifications and prices, live elsewhere and are referenced by product code.

Organise by application, not by principal

A distributor’s buyer rarely starts with a manufacturer’s name. They start with a job: a warehouse that needs fire suppression, a villa compound that needs CCTV, a factory that needs a pump set. If your catalogue is ordered by supplier, that buyer has to know your principals before they can find anything.

A structure that works for most multi-brand ranges looks like this:

1. Applications or systems as the top level (for example: detection, suppression, pumping, access control).
2. Product families inside each application (for example, within suppression: extinguishers, sprinklers, valves, kitchen-hood systems).
3. Individual products inside each family, each with a short description, a standard spec table and a product code.
4. A brand index at the back listing each principal and the pages where its products appear, so the buyer who does ask for a brand by name can still find it in seconds.

Two rules make this structure hold up. First, give every product an internal code that never changes, even if you also show the manufacturer’s part number. Your price list, your quotations and your WhatsApp replies should all use the same code. Second, put the principal’s logo and any partner wording on the product page, within the manufacturer’s brand guidelines, so the brand stays visible without dictating the order of the book.

Standardise the specification table

One of the most useful improvements a distributor can make is one spec-table template used for every product in a family, regardless of who made it. Buyers compare across rows; if one supplier lists flow rate in litres per minute and another in gallons per minute, the comparison breaks.

Build the table from a master sheet

Keep the specifications in one spreadsheet, one row per SKU, one column per attribute, before anything is designed. That sheet becomes the single source for the catalogue, the website product pages and any marketplace listings. For each family, agree:

• The fixed attribute list and its order (for example: model, size or capacity, material, operating range, approvals, dimensions, weight).
• One unit system, with secondary units in brackets only where your buyers expect them.
• How approvals are written: the exact name of each listing or certificate, as it appears on the manufacturer’s documentation, and never an approval you cannot show on paper.
• What “not applicable” looks like: a dash, not an empty cell, so the reader knows the field was checked.
• Where the full data sheet lives: a short link or QR code per family pointing to the current manufacturer document. Security and low-current ranges often need solution sheets for security ranges as well, because buyers compare systems rather than single devices.

Hypothetical example: one sprinkler table for two principals

Suppose a distributor carries upright sprinklers from two manufacturers, here called Principal A and Principal B. Their data sheets use different column orders and different names for the same attribute. The catalogue shows both in one table, in one order, with the same labels in both languages. The values below are placeholders to show the layout; take every real value and approval from the current manufacturer documents.

Three details carry the work. The internal code in the first column is the one the price list and WhatsApp replies use. The dash in the last row tells the reader the field was checked and is missing from the source, not forgotten; chase the manufacturer for it before release. And the approvals column is copied, never summarised, because an engineer will compare it word for word with the specification.

For the Pyramid extinguisher range in RX’s product campaigns for Azeidk, dry powder, CO2, foam, wet chemical and clean-agent extinguishers were laid out as catalogue posts with standards, sizes and use cases: one family, one layout.

Design a bilingual layout that survives dense tables

Bilingual Arabic and English catalogues are common across the Gulf and Egypt, but spec tables are where bilingual layouts usually fail. A few principles, drawn from the W3C’s Arabic and Persian Layout Requirements, explain why.

• Numbers run left to right even inside Arabic text. The W3C document notes that numbers “are written from left to right” in right-to-left text. Model numbers, ranges such as 10–25 and units must be checked line by line in the final file, because signs and symbols can attach to the wrong side of a number.
• Choose your digit style deliberately. The same document lists Arabic-Indic digits for Eastern Arabic-speaking countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and European digits for the Maghreb, for example Algeria and Morocco. Choose the style that suits your buyers and the documents they compare you against, then apply it to every table, not page by page.
• Do not letter-space Arabic to fit a column. The W3C warns that moving joined characters closer together or further apart “creates undesirable results”. If an Arabic label does not fit, shorten the label or widen the column.
• Allow more vertical room. Arabic ascenders and descenders “extend much further than those of the Latin script”, so a row height that suits English will often clip or crowd Arabic.
• Set page direction by the leading language. When Arabic leads, the W3C notes, page layout and structure run right to left too. Decide whether your catalogue is Arabic-first or English-first and mirror the grid accordingly.

In practice there are three workable options. A side-by-side layout puts Arabic and English labels in the same table, with technical values shown once; this suits families with short labels. Facing pages give each language its own page with identical tables; this suits products with long descriptions. Separate editions are the cleanest to read but double the update work, so they make sense only when your markets genuinely split by language. Whichever you choose, use a typeface family designed with matching Arabic and Latin weights, and test the smallest table text at actual size before the full layout is built.

Keep prices in a separate, dated price list

Putting prices inside the catalogue shortens its useful life to the next supplier increase. A separate price list, keyed to the same product codes, can be reissued in a day. Give it a version number, an issue date, a validity statement, the currency and the commercial terms on the first page, so nobody quotes from an old copy.

Prices that are published also carry VAT display rules that differ by country.

Saudi Arabia

ZATCA’s VAT guideline for the retail sector (third issue, May 2026) states that “in all cases, the price advertised in the local market for goods and services must include VAT”, and says the Authority considers this to apply to published electronic and printed advertised prices. The guideline is written for the retail sector, and it also notes that a customer and supplier may agree different price terms even where prices are published. How it applies to a trade price list for registered businesses is a question for your tax adviser. If your list is shared openly, for example on your website or in a broadcast message, VAT-inclusive prices are the cautious default; check the current guideline before each edition.

United Arab Emirates

Article 38 of the UAE VAT Decree-Law states that “in the case of a Taxable Supply, the advertised price shall include the Tax”, and leaves the exceptions to the Executive Regulation. Failure to display tax-inclusive prices is listed in the same law among the cases for an administrative penalty. The Executive Regulation sets out the cases where prices may be shown without VAT. A 2025 analysis by a UAE law firm published on Legal 500 reads these as including supplies to VAT-registered businesses and exports, where the exclusion is clearly stated. If you plan a VAT-exclusive trade list for registered resellers, check the current text of the Executive Regulation with your tax adviser first, and put the VAT statement on the document rather than leaving it implied.

Egypt

In Egypt the main catalogue risk is less about display wording and more about how quickly prices move. Keep the price list short-lived, state its validity clearly and reissue it rather than amending old copies; check VAT presentation with your accountant.

Produce three versions from one source file

Sales teams use catalogues in three very different situations, and one file cannot serve all three well.

The WhatsApp version deserves close attention because it is likely to be the one sales teams use most often day to day. Instead of sending a 100-page file to someone who asked about one valve, the salesperson should be able to send the relevant family page in seconds, alongside the rest of the distributor sales kit. The WhatsApp Business app also has a built-in catalogue: WhatsApp describes it as a mobile storefront where you can group similar items into collections and share the whole catalogue or links to specific items. For a distributor, collections map naturally onto the application structure above, and each item can carry the same product code and a link to the data sheet.

All three versions should come from the same master spreadsheet and the same design file, so an update to a spec or a new product flows into every version at once. If your launch of a new principal is still ahead, the exclusive distributor launch sequence shows where the catalogue fits in the wider plan.

Release checklist and update routine

Before any version goes out, run through this list:

• Every product has an internal code that matches the price list and the WhatsApp catalogue.
• Every approval or certificate shown has a document on file from the manufacturer.
• Spec tables in each family use the same attributes, order and units.
• Arabic and English values have been checked against the master sheet by someone who reads both, with numbers, ranges and units checked line by line.
• Each principal’s logo and wording follow its brand guidelines and have been approved where the agreement requires it.
• No prices appear in the catalogue; the price list carries a date, version, validity, currency and VAT statement.
• The interactive PDF links to current data sheets, and the WhatsApp set has been tested on a phone over mobile data.
• The catalogue carries an edition date, so the sales team can tell which copy is current.

Then set the routine: who adds new SKUs to the master sheet, how often the catalogue is reissued, who retires old PDFs from shared drives and phones, and who signs off each edition. Without an owner, a well-built catalogue drifts back into a folder of supplier files within a year.

RX designs product catalogues, price lists and data-sheet layouts for agents and distributors as part of its distributor and product marketing work, under both the distributor’s brand and each partner’s guidelines. Start with one product family: build its master sheet, normalise two principals’ specs into one table and test the WhatsApp page on a phone. If that family reads well, the template is ready for the whole range; if it does not, bring it to a business diagnosis session and we will review it with you.