Transforming Unstructured Retail Catalogs into Structured Data using AI

Comparing products on e-commerce platforms is straightforward because the data is already structured. However, when dealing with weekly promotional catalogs published by traditional retail chains, you are often left with giant JPEG images containing hundreds of products, prices, and scattered text. In this post, I will share the high-level architecture behind Haftalikaktuel , a platform we built to ingest these unstructured catalog images, parse them using AI, and turn them into a fully structured, searchable comparison engine. 🏗️ High-Level Architecture The system is decoupled into three main operational stacks: Frontend (Public Web): Built with Next.js (App Router) leveraging React Server Components. Data Extraction Pipeline: A Python-based async processing pipeline handling orchestration and extraction. Data & Search Layer: A combination of document databases, vector search engines, and object storage for optimized assets. The core challenge lies within the data pipeline—moving beyo