Outsourcing the catalogue or hiring an ecommerce manager

You have stock you already paid for that is not published yet, half-finished product pages, descriptions copied straight from the supplier, and translations that never left the main language. And you have three quotes on the table that look nothing like each other: an in-house ecommerce manager, an agency to push it through as a project, and one dedicated person doing the volume work with your criteria.

This comparison is written by whoever sells the third one, so the only honest thing it can offer is to compare on criteria and say plainly when one of the others suits you better. There are four criteria: who decides, what happens to ongoing upkeep, what happens during a peak, and what it takes to start.

The three options, without the trimmings

In-house ecommerce manager. Someone with judgement of their own who decides catalogue strategy, category architecture, the tone of the pages and the pricing, and who also executes. It is the option with the most authority and the only one that can say «no» to a bad decision.

Agency on a project. A team comes in, gets up to speed, pushes a large block of work through —a migration, five hundred product pages, a whole language— and leaves. You get a measurable before and after, with a delivery date.

A dedicated person on the volume. Someone working full time inside your store, in your tone and by your rules, doing the work that never ends. They do not decide the strategy: they execute it, every week, with your criteria.

Put like that they read as three quotes. They look very different the moment you cross them with the four criteria.

Who decides

In-house manager. They decide, and that is exactly what you are buying. They know when a category is badly built, when a supplier description is not good enough, and when the whole taxonomy needs redoing. That judgement is expensive to find and it does not get delegated.

Agency. They decide within the brief. They bring their method, their page template and their way of naming attributes, which are usually good and usually theirs. The day you want to change a rule mid-project, it joins their change queue.

Dedicated person. You decide and they execute. It is the option with the least strategic judgement of its own and the one that respects yours the most: if your naming rules are odd but they are yours, they get applied as they are. That asks something of you, and it is worth saying: somebody has to set the rules. With nobody doing that, this option performs badly.

Ongoing upkeep, which is nearly all of the work

This is where the comparison is really settled, and where almost nobody looks when asking for a quote.

A store's catalogue is not a project: it is a flow. New references come in every week, the supplier changes measurements, a price goes stale, a photo does not match, a size is discontinued, yesterday's publications need translating. That work is not hard: it is endless. Which is why it gets done when it is somebody's only job, and not when it is what happens if there is time left over.

In-house manager. Here is the catch: the volume work eats their calendar. You hire someone for their judgement and they end up creating variants at seven in the evening, since that is what is most pressing. It is the most expensive way to do repetitive work, and it also wastes what made them valuable.

Agency on a project. It pushes and leaves, and the catalogue starts ageing again the next day. A year later you have the same problem plus one more project in the accounts. You can buy ongoing maintenance, of course, and then the conversation is no longer «agency or person»: it is how much continuity and how much control each one buys you.

Dedicated person. This is the one designed for a flow: the same work, every week, without anyone having to ask for it. It is what the catalogue management page describes, and the reason that job is measured in references published per month and items still pending, not in projects delivered.

What happens during a peak

In-house manager. A peak is when their judgement is needed most and they have the least time, since they are firefighting. The catalogue freezes: whatever is not published by October does not get published.

Agency. This is their best moment. A predictable, bounded spike —five hundred pages ready for a date— is exactly what a large team handles well, by moving people onto the brief.

Dedicated person. They reach the peak with the catalogue already up to date, which is the real difference: they are not publishing in November what should have gone out in July. If the spike is huge and short, project reinforcement fits better, and the two coexist without any trouble. In ecommerce this is rarely an all-or-nothing choice.

What it takes to start

Not rates here, but what you have to put in before you see the first result.

In-house manager. A search —advert, screening, interviews, hours from your team—, an onboarding, and the time until they know your catalogue. Underneath the gross salary sit items that appear on no payslip and that you pay anyway: the employer contribution, the laptop, the physical desk, the hours spent on selection, the days when the seat is filled on paper and not in practice. To see them added up with your own figures, they are on the real cost of an employee.

Agency. A good brief and a review at the end. It is the option with the least start-up load for you, and also the one that leaves the least behind: when the project ends, what was learned lives in their documentation.

Dedicated person. The rules written down —naming, mandatory attributes, the tone of descriptions, what to do with an incomplete page—, back-office access before day one, and a few training sessions in the first week. The selection, the equipment and the follow-up are not on you.

When the in-house manager is the right answer

And it clearly is, in three cases.

When the catalogue is the business. If what sets you apart is how your offer is built —how it is grouped, how it is named, how it is compared— that is strategy, and strategy is kept inside. You do not delegate the judgement; you delegate the volume it generates.

When there is a lot to decide and little to execute. Short catalogues with expensive decisions: few references, complex pricing, conditions that vary by customer. There the repetitive work does not fill a week and the judgement does.

When that seat is going to grow upwards. If in two years you want someone running the whole channel, start by hiring that person. Delegating volume does not build your future head of ecommerce.

And there is a pattern that works better than any of the three on its own: an in-house manager who decides, with the volume delegated. They stop creating variants in the evening and start doing the work you hired them for.

When the agency project is the right answer

When there is a block with a beginning and an end: a platform migration, a whole new language, a clean-up of an inherited catalogue. If no weekly flow is left once it finishes, do not go looking for anyone full time. Also when the spike is very large and very short, or when you need a speciality you will use once a year.

How to decide in ten minutes

Three questions about your catalogue, not about the model:

1. How many hours a week of repetitive work does it genuinely generate right now?

2. Who sets the rules, and are they written down or only in someone's head?

3. Is what I am missing judgement, or hands to apply it?

If judgement is missing, hire judgement. If hands are missing, do not pay for judgement to create product pages. And if you have both mixed into one person who is still going at seven in the evening, you already know which of the two is not getting done.

If you want to see how the volume side is set up, it is on catalogue management: what it does, what it does not do, and what you will measure. Half an hour on a call with your number of pending references in front of you, and if we are not a fit we will tell you in that same conversation.