Catalog · pdf-lib

Catalog builder

Send the buyer a catalog a real supplier would have made.

A cold-outreach email with no catalog, or a catalog that is a folder of loose photos, lands as a trader with nothing behind them. The buyer's procurement team forwards a clean branded catalog internally and bins the loose attachments; the document is the difference between getting shortlisted and getting filtered.

Fill the cover, the product pages, and the contact block, and the tool builds a multi-page branded PDF catalog with a table of contents, ready for cold outreach, trade shows, and Alibaba uploads.

Last updated 2026-05-09. Math runs in your browser, no data leaves your computer.

Catalog cover

Products

One per page. Add up to 24.

General guidance only. Verify against the cited primary sources before you commit to a shipment, declaration, or contract.

Catalogs in chemical-trade context

A catalog is the supplier's calling card in a cold-outreach world. Buyers receive 30 to 80 cold introductions per week from Chinese chemical suppliers; the ones with a clean, professional, multi-product PDF stand out. The ones with a one-line text email and no attachment go to spam. The catalog signals operational maturity: the supplier has a defined product range, knows what it sells, and can present its offering in a structured way.

For chemical exporters, a typical catalog runs 8 to 24 products, organised by category (acids and caustics, solvents, intermediates, food-grade, specialty). Each product page carries the name (English plus Chinese where relevant), SKU or internal code, CAS, HS code, short description (one paragraph), 3 to 4 key specs (typical assay, typical purity, key impurity limit, packaging), and ideally a product image (a clean shot of the bag, drum, or pure sample, against a neutral background).

The cover sets the tone. Company name, tagline, contact email, phone, year and edition. A clean cover with the brand colour, the company name in large clear typography, and the contact details visible signals the supplier takes the catalog seriously. Generic or stock-photo-heavy covers signal the opposite.

The table of contents on page 2 helps buyers navigate. Buyer-side procurement teams scan the TOC to find the products they care about, jump straight to that page, and skip the rest. A catalog without a TOC is a worse experience and signals less effort.

The per-SKU and per-batch companion documents are linked below.

A worked example

The booking. A buyer asks what else you carry beyond the one product they enquired about, and you reply with a plain-text email listing eight product names and a line of specs each.

The failure. The buyer skims it, can't tell your range from the thirty other cold emails that week, and moves on. A wall of text reads like a trader reselling someone else's goods, not a supplier with a defined range. The enquiry that could have opened a multi-SKU account quietly goes cold.

The fix. Build the same eight products into a clean PDF catalog: cover, table of contents, one tidy page per product with CAS, HS, specs, and a photo. Attach it to the reply. The buyer now sees a supplier who knows what it sells, scans the contents for what they need, and comes back about three more lines.

Need the per-SKU detail sheet to attach to a specific RFQ reply? The product spec sheet generator builds it at /tools/image-and-content/product-spec-sheet-generator.

Backing a listed grade with batch results? The certificate of analysis template is at /tools/documentation/coa-template.

Frequently asked

What is a catalog?

A multi-page branded PDF showing your full product range: cover, table of contents, one product per page (or two-per-page for higher density), with image, name, SKU, short description, key specs. The catalog is the document you attach to cold-outreach emails, post on Alibaba product pages, and hand out at trade shows.

Can I include product images?

Yes. Upload one image per product (JPG, PNG, or WebP, max 2 MB each); the image is embedded in the PDF at the product page. The catalog stays as a single self-contained PDF, no external links. For batches without images the page renders text-only.

Why a single catalog rather than separate spec sheets?

Both have a place. The catalog is the at-a-glance overview for cold outreach and trade shows; the spec sheet (Sourzi /tools/image-and-content/product-spec-sheet-generator) is the per-SKU detail attached to specific RFQ replies. Most exporters maintain both, refreshed quarterly.

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