Channel Hub is where your one catalog meets every marketplace. You maintain products, inventory, and pricing in one place; Channel Hub publishes them out as listings, keeps them in sync, and pulls every order back into one inbox. This page is the map — the model, the lifecycle, and where to go next.
What Channel Hub does
- Publishes your catalog as listings on Google Shopping, Amazon, eBay, and Walmart.
- Keeps them accurate — inventory and price sync out; the listing’s real status syncs back.
- Unifies orders — every sale lands in one Orders inbox on a single lifecycle.
ℹ️ The mental model: ILLUMA is the system of record — the brain. A marketplace is just a surface your products appear on. You run your business here; the channels are downstream.
One catalog, many channels
You never maintain a separate product list per marketplace. A product lives once in your catalog and is assigned to as many channels as you sell on. Change a price or a quantity once, and it propagates to every channel it’s listed on. Everything keys off the product’s SKU, so stable SKUs are the foundation of a healthy setup.
How a product gets sold on a channel
Four stages, the same on every channel:
- Catalog — the product exists with a clean SKU.
- Assigned — you attach it to a channel.
- Listed — Channel Hub publishes it and the marketplace accepts it.
- Selling — orders flow back into your unified inbox.
Assigning and listing are deliberately distinct — a product can be attached to a channel without being live on it. Understanding that distinction is the single most useful thing you can learn here: How listings work: assign, publish & status.
Connect a channel
Each marketplace has its own connect and mapping flow:
- Connect Google Shopping — list your whole catalog via the Merchant API.
- Connect Amazon — map to ASINs, sync inventory and price, import orders.
- Connect eBay — publish listings with your business policies.
- Connect Walmart — publish to Walmart Marketplace.
Get everything live
- Listing your catalog: bulk actions — List All Products and the targeted actions.
- Syncing inventory, price & product data — what keeps a listing accurate, and how.
- Listing mapping & importing existing listings — match, create, or import listings you already have.
- Troubleshooting listings & sync — when something isn’t where you expect it.