America’s biggest social marketplace for contractor tradespeople will offer new tools to nearly...
Trade Hounds is always looking for ways to improve how tradespeople access the materials and products they need to get the job done. That’s why we partner with organizations like IDEA, the Industry Data Exchange Association, to enhance our product catalogs and streamline the buying process. Jeanette Abrahamsen, VP of Social and Content at Trade Hounds, recently had the chance to sit down with IDEA’s Sonia Coleman to talk about how they’re transforming the electrical industry through data standardization and artificial intelligence.
The Role of IDEA in the Electrical Industry
Sonia has been working with IDEA for years, focusing on gathering real-world feedback from customers, developing case studies, and ensuring IDEA’s tools effectively support the industry. IDEA plays a crucial role in improving data accuracy and accessibility, helping distributors and manufacturers work together to transfer information more efficiently.
“Manufacturers, a very large number of them in electrical, provide their data to IDEA — everything from transactional, e-commerce, images,” she explains. “They basically put that into the IDEA Connector platform, and then distributors can export that in the format that they need.”
Distributors use this data to power their sales and other parts of their business. By standardizing and simplifying data access, IDEA Connector helps drive efficiency and digital transformation across the supply chain.
AI-Powered Image Search: A New Way to Find Materials
At Trade Hounds, we leverage IDEA’s data to improve our product catalogs. This integration allows tradespeople to quickly search for and locate the materials they need at distributor branches.
“We've been getting more information about different products at distributor branches around the country and making it easier for our tradespeople in the app to search for products and find where to buy them,” says Jeanette Abrahamsen. "It's a necessity for our ability to communicate that type of information to the tradespeople out there that are looking to buy these products in their jobs every day.
One of the most exciting innovations we’ve recently launched at Trade Hounds is an AI-driven image search feature. 
“The user can turn on the camera and take a picture of any material they have, and it'll automatically pull up the brand name, the product name, and where can you find that at different distributors,” Abrahamsen explains. “Data is central to every single thing that we can then build on top of it.”
The benefits of this technology extend beyond convenience—it drives more traffic to distributors, increases sales for manufacturers, and ensures contractors get the right materials faster.
Data Standardization: A Game-Changer for the Industry
At IDEA, a major focus has been the Harmonized Data Model (HDM), a project that brings manufacturers and distributors together to create standardized data formats. By working with around 60 companies, they’ve developed a process that allows manufacturers to input data once, and distributors can receive it in the format they need. This eliminates inconsistencies that previously made searching and managing inventory a challenge.
For example, something as simple as “half inch” can be represented in multiple ways across different databases. A distributor might get nine different versions of the same measurement, which creates confusion and delays when searching for products. With standardized data, the process is streamlined, allowing distributors to access clean, accurate information in a way that saves time and improves efficiency. This also ensures that tradespeople can find what they need more easily, eliminating the frustration of inaccurate or missing product details.
“Ultimately distributors are going to have a much better, cleaner, more unified standards-based information that they're getting, which is going to be a big win for the industry and for our customers,” Sonia emphasized.
By ensuring that the right information flows directly from manufacturers to distributors and then to the end-user, the whole process becomes more efficient. With better data, tradespeople will have a smoother, more seamless purchasing process, eliminating frustration and speeding up the buying journey.
Looking Ahead
The collaboration between Trade Hounds and IDEA is proof that when technology meets high-quality data, the entire industry benefits. Whether it’s standardizing data or making product searches seamless, these innovations are paving the way for a more connected, efficient industry.
“I'm very excited about the future. I think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity to help distributors, manufacturers, and end-users be more efficient and better serve their own companies and their own customers,” Sonia says. “When we work together, a lot of times we can see a lot more progress faster. And I think the manufacturers and distributors understand that."
“We have that same philosophy,” adds Jeanette.
Stay tuned for more updates on how we’re using data and AI to enhance the Trade Hounds platform and empower the trades community!
You can watch the full conversation between Jeanette Abrahamsen and Sonia Coleman below!
