Retailer Network

Your retailer network is the set of stores that carry your products. Stockisto models every store as a retailer and links it to your supplier account through a connection. This guide covers how supplier admins build and manage that network — adding retailers, sending and managing connection invites, moving connections through their lifecycle, and organising retailers into groups for your locator.

How the network is modelled

Two concepts work together:

• Retailer — a business that stocks and sells your products. Each retailer has its own tenant (it is a first-class account in Stockisto), so the same retailer can appear in more than one supplier's network. Core fields are name, address, city, postal code, country (defaults to SE), phone, email, website, and freeform opening hours.
• Connection (internally a supplier-retailer relationship) — the link between your supplier account and a retailer. A retailer only appears in your network, and only shows on your locator, once a connection exists. Connections carry a status, an optional tier label, and a record of who initiated them.

Connection states

Every connection has one of the following statuses. The Connections page groups your connections into sections by status.

The status also records who initiated the connection — Supplier when you sent the invite, Retailer when the store applied to join you.

Building your network

There are four ways a retailer can enter your network. The first three are driven by you; the fourth is initiated by the retailer.

1. Import retailers in bulk

The fastest way to seed your network is a CSV/XLSX import or a web scrape of your existing dealer page. Imported retailers are created with an Active connection automatically, so they show on your locator as soon as they pass the review queue. See the Data Import guide for the field reference and review workflow.

2. Add a single retailer directly

When you create a retailer from the supplier admin, Stockisto creates the retailer record and an Active connection to it in one step — no invite round-trip needed. Use this when you already have the store's details and don't need the retailer to confirm.

3. Invite a retailer from the directory

If the store already exists as a retailer on Stockisto (for example, another supplier added it, or it self-registered), invite it instead of recreating it:

1. Open Connections → Browse Directory (/connections/directory).
2. The directory lists active retailers you are not already connected to — retailers already in an Active, Invited, or Paused connection are hidden so you never double-invite.
3. Click Send Invite next to a store.

This creates a connection in the Invited state with InitiatedBy = Supplier. The button switches to Invited once the invite is sent. The retailer then sees the request in their own admin and can accept or decline it.

4. Approve a retailer who applies to join

Retailers can apply to your network themselves via a public join request (typically from your "where to buy" page). Applications arrive as draft retailer records that are not yet active and not yet on your locator.

• Review pending applications in your claim/join request queue.
• Approve a request to activate the retailer, auto-create an Active connection, and send the store a claim invite so they can manage their own listing.

Responding to invites (the retailer's side)

For context, here is what happens after you send an invite — the retailer drives this part from their own admin:

• The retailer sees the invite under their pending connection requests.
• They accept, moving the connection to Active (it now appears on your locator), or they decline, moving it to Inactive with an optional decline note.
• If a retailer declines, the note they leave is visible on the connection so you understand why.

Managing active connections

Once a connection is Active, you manage it from the Connections page (/connections).

Pause and resume

• Pause an active connection to temporarily remove the retailer from your locator without losing the relationship or its history. The status moves to Paused.
• Resume a paused connection to return it to Active and restore the retailer on your locator.

Pause is supplier-controlled and reversible — use it for seasonal stores, stores under review, or partners you've put on hold.

Assign a tier

Each connection can carry a tier label that you set inline from the tier dropdown on the connection row. Tier is a partnership label you control — it lets you mark which retailers are your priority partners and can influence how they sort in locator results.

Understand visibility (Why?)

Every connection row has a Why? popover that explains why a retailer shows the way it does on your locator. It breaks visibility into signals:

• Geo coverage — whether the retailer has a geocoded location (a higher score means a reliable map pin).
• Data freshness — decays over time since the retailer last updated its profile, so stale listings score lower.
• Assortment — Inferred when the retailer has stock data on file, otherwise Unknown.
• Availability — confidence in live stock availability.

Use these signals to spot retailers with thin or stale data. For stores with low freshness, you can send a data-refresh prompt asking them to update their listing.

Retailer groups

Groups let you carve your network into curated subsets that consumers can filter by on your locator — for example a "Premium Partners" view or a regional cut. Manage them under Network → Retailer Groups (/network/groups).

Static groups

A static group is a hand-picked list of retailers:

1. Click + New Group, give it a name and an optional description.
2. Open the group and add retailers from the dropdown. Only retailers already in your network can be added — if a store isn't connected to you, add it to your network first.
3. Remove a member at any time; removing a retailer from a group never affects the underlying connection.

Dynamic (tag-based) groups

A dynamic group resolves its members automatically at query time by matching service tags instead of a fixed list. When you create a dynamic group you supply a tag filter; any retailer in your network whose locations carry a matching service tag becomes a member. Dynamic groups stay current as your retailers' tags change — there's no list to maintain.

Using a group on your locator

Every group has a Group ID. Append it to your locator URL to filter results to just that group:

?groupId=YOUR_GROUP_ID

The group detail page shows the ID with a one-click Copy ID button and a ready-made ?groupId=... snippet. See the Sharing + Groups guide for the full filtering and sharing model.

Removing a retailer

To take a retailer off your locator you have two reversible/permanent options:

• Pause the connection — best for temporary removal; the relationship and its history are preserved and you can resume any time.
• Deactivate the retailer — sets the retailer to inactive so it stops appearing in your network listing and locator. Deactivation requires that you have a connection to the retailer.

Neither action deletes the retailer record or its data, and neither affects other suppliers connected to the same store.

What's next?

• Data Import guide — bulk-load retailers into your network.
• Sharing + Groups guide — control who sees your locator and how groups filter it.
• Analytics + ROI guide — measure how your network performs.