About Tjernlund Products
For over 50 years, Tjernlund Products has been a trusted name in HVAC ventilation solutions. Based in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, the company manufactures and distributes specialized ventilation systems, draft inducers, exhaust solutions, and accessories for residential and commercial applications. Their products serve contractors, distributors, and end users through multiple channels, including major online marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, Lowe’s, and Home Depot. Industry-wide, 70% of SKUs fail to publish due to fragmented systems, manual entry, and constantly changing marketplace requirements. Tjernlund was no exception.
The Challenge: When Product Data Becomes a Growth Bottleneck
As Tjernlund expanded its marketplace presence, the team hit a wall.
The problem was clear: Product information lived everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Technical specifications were buried in manufacturer PDFs, scattered across internal spreadsheets, embedded in supplier websites, and stored in disconnected files. Each time the team wanted to list a product on a marketplace, they faced the same frustrating cycle:
- Manually hunt down product specifications from multiple sources
- Map each SKU into marketplace-specific templates (Amazon’s requirements differed from Walmart’s, which differed from Lowe’s)
- Navigate varying validation rules that triggered rejections and forced constant rework
- Repeat this process for every single SKU
The math was sobering: Processing a few hundred SKUs could take weeks. With a publish rate hovering around 30% (well below even the industry average), the majority of listing attempts failed on the first submission. The team spent hundreds of hours each month on manual data cleanup and template mapping—time that could have been spent on strategic growth initiatives.
Why Traditional Approaches Weren’t Working. Like many industrial manufacturers, Tjernlund had invested in product information management tools. But PIMs are systems of record; they store and organize data, but don’t transform it. Every marketplace still required manual template mapping. Every channel had different validation rules. The PIM held the data; the team still had to do all the work. What Tjernlund needed wasn’t another place to store product information, they needed intelligence that could actually make that information marketplace-ready.
The real cost wasn’t just operational inefficiency. Every delayed listing meant delayed revenue. Every failed submission meant lost marketplace visibility. Every manual hour spent on data wrangling was a constraint on catalog expansion. For a company managing technically complex, regulation-heavy HVAC products across multiple marketplaces, this process was unsustainable.
The Solution: Building a Golden Catalog Foundation
Tjernlund partnered with atronous to fundamentally transform how they managed product data. Rather than continuing to fight the same battles with every SKU, they built a Golden Catalog; normalized, validated, and marketplace-ready product data that flows everywhere automatically. Not a static database, but a dynamic foundation that adapts to every channel’s requirements.
How It Works
1. Intelligent Data Extraction and Enhancement
atronous doesn’t just move data, it transforms it. The platform automatically:
- Extracts and structures product information from PDFs, spreadsheets, and manufacturer sources
- Enriches taxonomy by assigning proper product categories and hierarchies
- Standardizes product types and generates item names with correct variant structures
- Validates identifiers including UPCs, GTINs, and package-level barcodes
- Processes and optimizes images for marketplace requirements
- Generates marketplace-optimized content, including features, descriptions, and material specifications
- Derives shipping attributes from dimensional data (weight, dimensions, package configuration)
Everything flows into a normalized, structured format, no more hunting through scattered files or manual data entry.
2. Marketplace-Ready Attribute Framework
TThe atronous team analyzed templates from Amazon, Walmart, Lowe’s, and Home Depot to build a comprehensive attribute model that covered every required and optional field across all channels:
- Technical specifications (cutting diameter, shank diameter, materials)
- Dimensional data (assembled and packaged dimensions)
- Compliance indicators and certifications (dangerous goods, battery information)
- Merchandising attributes for each marketplace (taxonomy, variants, UPC/EAN/GTIN)
Each attribute was standardized with consistent data types, formats, and validation rules. This meant a product entered once in the Golden Catalog could automatically map to every marketplace template without manual rework.
3. Automated Validation and Publishing
Once product data is entered into the Golden Catalog:
- SKUs were automatically mapped into marketplace-ready templates
- Validation rules caught errors before submission, preventing publish failures
- Images were processed and sized according to each marketplace’s specifications
- Human involvement shifted from manual mapping to exception handling and approvals
The team went from wrestling with spreadsheets to reviewing and approving ready-to-publish listings.
The Results: From Bottleneck to Growth Engine
The transformation proved what merchandising teams often struggle to demonstrate to leadership: product data isn’t just an operational task—it’s a growth lever. The results were immediate and measurable:
| Metric | Before atronous | After atronous | Impact |
| Publish Rate | ~30% | ~90% | 3x improvement in listing success |
| Time to List | Weeks | Hours | 100x+ faster SKU onboarding |
| Monthly Throughput | Hundreds per batch | 8,000–10,000 | 20x+ increase in scale |
| Manual Effort | High mapping & rework | Exception-only review | Hundreds of hours saved monthly |
| Revenue Impact | Delayed launches | $660K+ in 3 months | Immediate marketplace growth |
What This Means for the Business
Speed to Market: New products now go from specification to live listing in hours instead of weeks, allowing Tjernlund to respond rapidly to market opportunities.
Scalable Operations: The team processes 8,000–10,000 SKUs monthly without increasing headcount, freeing resources for strategic initiatives rather than data cleanup.
Revenue Acceleration: With 90% of listings publishing successfully on first submission, Tjernlund captured over $660,000 in new revenue within just three months.
Future-Ready Infrastructure: The Golden Catalog serves as a durable foundation for expanding into new marketplaces, regions, and product categories without rebuilding data workflows.
Beyond Efficiency: Strategic Transformation
The atronous Golden Catalog gave Tjernlund more than operational improvements; it fundamentally changed what was possible for the business.
Improved Data Trust: With a single source of truth, teams across the organization now work from consistent, validated product information. No more conflicting specs or outdated files.
Faster Product Launches: When new suppliers or products come on board, the standardized workflow enables rapid integration without starting from scratch.
Channel Expansion: Because the Golden Catalog supports multiple marketplace formats, Tjernlund can now explore new sales channels without worrying about rebuilding its entire data infrastructure.
AI and Automation Ready: As marketplaces evolve toward AI-driven commerce and automated catalog management, Tjernlund’s structured data foundation positions them to take advantage of emerging technologies.
Is This Your Challenge?
If your team is spending more time wrangling spreadsheets than expanding into new channels, if your publish rate is below 50%, if adding new SKUs means adding headcount, the Tjernlund transformation isn’t unique. It’s a pattern we’ve seen across HVAC, home improvement, dental supply, and apparel. The bottleneck is the same. The solution scales.
What Tjernlund’s Leadership Says
“atronous changed how we manage product data. Tasks that used to take weeks for a few hundred SKUs now take hours. We can list 10,000 SKUs with almost no manual work. We saw new revenue within three months, and atronous is now a core part of our digital growth.”
— Tjernlund Company Owner
Looking Ahead
What started as a solution to a data bottleneck has become a strategic advantage, and a foundation for what’s coming next.
AI shopping agents are already changing how products get discovered and purchased. When ChatGPT or Perplexity recommends a product, it’s making decisions based on structured data, not pretty photos. Tjernlund’s Golden Catalog means their products are ready for this shift; structured for machines, not just human browsers.
With infrastructure to scale its catalog, expand into new channels, and respond to market opportunities with confidence, Tjernlund isn’t just keeping up with the marketplaces of today. They’re prepared for the autonomous, agent-driven commerce of tomorrow.
About atronous
atronous is the leader in Catalog Automation and Catalog Intelligence; the AI-powered layer that transforms raw product data into marketplace-ready, decision-ready product intelligence. We’re not a PIM replacement; we’re the intelligence that makes PIMs actually work at scale.
