Patent ID: 7590566

Claim:
A method for receiving quote solicitations from remote customers and routing received quote solicitations to remote vendors within virtual and hybrid retailing systems, the method comprising: receiving information, by a retailing computing system, from a remote customer through a customer interface, that specifies a product design and order for the product desired by the remote customer; determining, by the retailing computing system, using information stored in memory or in a database within the retailing computing system, a list of one or more vendors that can fulfill the order; instantiating a quoter object for each vendor in the list of vendors; accessing, by the retailing computing system, each quoter object and obtaining quote-related information needed to formulate a quote for order fulfillment by the vendor associated with the quoter object, each quoter object including functionality for accessing information, including one or more of data and routines, stored within the retailing computing system to obtain all or a portion of the quote-related information and including functionality for accessing, through a communications interface, a remote vendor interface provided by the vendor associated with the quoter object to obtain all or a portion of the quote-related information; constructing and formatting, by the retailing computing system, a final quote using the quote-related information obtained from each quoter object; and returning, by the retailing computing system, the final quote to the customer.