This business model is typical for manufacturers of auto parts who want to sell their products online — either directly to customers or through a network of dealers.

Your X-Cart store catalog will serve as a product showcase regardless of your sales model. However, how you operate can vary. For example, you may choose to sell your products directly through your store, or you can disable purchasing functionality and direct customers to purchase your products through authorized dealers.

After reflecting on the key questions about what your X-Cart–based business should look like (outlined in the article What to consider before launching your X-Cart Automotive store), you can move on to setting up your X-Cart store.

The Getting started with X-Cart guide walks you through the essential steps to prepare your store for selling. While most configuration tasks can be completed independently, our onboarding team is available to assist with the initial setup if needed.

Ensure all required components are installed and configured:

If using Auto Integrations (for example, SEMA Data as a supplier of product information), ensure the respective add-ons are properly configured. Follow the steps in the Connect an auto integration guide.

After onboarding, your store will include a preconfigured category tree structure where your products will be organized. This taxonomy is used by default. Review the structure to determine whether it meets your business needs. If not, you're free to customize it by editing category names and restructuring branches, or to remove the default taxonomy entirely and replace it with your own.

Categories can be created or modified manually or imported via CSV. For details, see Adding Categories.

If your catalog data provider (e.g., SEMA Data) already offers a well-structured and detailed taxonomy for the products you plan to showcase, you may opt to use the relevant auto integration to import product information into your store—and adopt the provider’s taxonomy accordingly. In this scenario, you will import category data from the catalog provider (e.g., SEMA Data) and configure category mapping. During the mapping process, you can choose either to adopt the provider’s taxonomy as-is or define rules for how products from the provider’s categories should be placed into your store’s category structure. For details, see the following guides:

Products can be added to your X-Cart store manually if needed, but when working with a large number of items, importing is the more efficient approach. There are two options:

If using the CSV import option, note that X-Cart requires a specific data format. Even if your product data is already in CSV format, you’ll need to convert it to match X-Cart’s format before importing. For information on X-Cart CSV import, see the guides in the Data Transfer section.

If using import from a catalog provider, import brands, configure brand-specific import rules and import products. For instructions, see the following guides:

Use the Dealer Locator add-on to set up product distribution through your network of dealers. You can add dealer information manually or through import. This will enable your store to generate a Find your dealer page, allowing customers to easily locate your sales partners. For more information, see the Dealer Locator Add-on guide.

If certain types of catalog data were missing during earlier stages of store setup—following the steps in the Getting started with X-Cart guide—and this prevented you from configuring your shipping, tax, or payment settings, you should now have all the necessary data in place to complete these configurations.