Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention include flexible and dynamic manufacturing and retailing systems that employ instantiated quoter objects for communicating with remote vendor interfaces to obtain information from vendors related to quote solicitations and to receive and process orders received from remote customers. The quoter objects may also access one or more database systems associated with the retailing system for locally storing and retrieving vendor and product information within the retailing system. The quoter objects may be implemented by vendors, transmitted by vendors to a retailing system, and automatically, manually, or semi-automatically incorporated within the retailing system. In certain embodiments of the retailing system, quoter objects are instantiated by decision support systems that conduct interactive dialogs with clients through one or more customer interfaces via one or more different types of communications media.