{How I use \LaTeX\ to make a product catalogue that doesn't look like a dissertation} {Jason Lewis} {I run a small wholesale and distribution business in Australia. I created a program that uses \LaTeX\ to produce \PDF\ for a full colour printed catalogue. The catalogue is about 70 pages, contains 8--10 full page colour adverts, has a table of contents and a product index, and usually has around 800--1000 products listed. We produce a new catalogue every six months. The program takes data from our accounting system about the price of products, combines it with some other data and produces a \LaTeX\ file that can be compiled to a \PDF. The \PDF\ is then ready for sending to the printer. The program greatly changed where the work load was for producing a catalogue. It used to be a lot of copying and pasting of data into Excel or InDesign, but now the work is mostly in data entry and ensuring the data is correct and ready for export to produce the catalogue. The program is written in Perl and Perl's Template Toolkit; it also integrates \acro{MS} Access and \acro{MS SQL} server. I faced numerous difficulties in building this system. \item{1.} \LaTeX\ documents don't natively look very much like a glossy catalogue. \item{2.} The system had to be usable by non-technical people to build new catalogues. \item{3.} Windows file paths don't map well in \LaTeX. \item{4.} Many characters that users want to use break \LaTeX. \item{5.} Making a templating system to produce the \LaTeX\ from a database of products. \item{6.} Integration of \acro{MS} Access, \SQL, Template Toolkit and Perl to produce \LaTeX. In my presentation I will outline how I worked around these difficulties to make a system for users to build new product catalogues when they need one. }