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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 connection invites, approving join requests, managing connection states, 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 is its own 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 opening hours. - Connection: 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.
Retailers are shared, connections are yours
A retailer record is shared across the platform, but your connection to it is private to your account. Pausing or removing a connection never deletes the retailer or affects other suppliers' connections to the same store.
Connection states
Every connection has one of the following statuses. The Connections page (/connections) groups your connections into sections by status.
| Status | Meaning | On your locator? |
|---|---|---|
| Invited | You sent an invite; awaiting the retailer's response. | No |
| Requested | The retailer asked to connect; review and accept. | No |
| Active | The retailer accepted, or you added them directly. | Yes |
| Paused | You paused an active connection. | No |
| Inactive | Declined or removed. Frees the retailer to be re-invited. | No |
The connection also records who initiated it: you (supplier) or the retailer.
Only Active connections are public
Until a connection reaches Active, the retailer will not appear on your published locator. If a store is missing from your locator, check its connection status first.
Building your network
There are four ways a retailer can enter your network. You drive the first three; the retailer starts the fourth.
1. Import retailers in bulk
The fastest way to seed your network is a CSV or XLSX import, or a scrape of your existing retailer page. Imported retailers are created with an Active connection, so they show on your locator as soon as you approve them in 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 under Retailers (/retailers), Stockisto creates the retailer record and an Active connection 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.
Retailer quota
Creating a retailer or sending an invite counts against your plan's retailer cap. Active and invited connections both count. If you hit the cap, the request returns an upgrade prompt (HTTP 402) instead of saving. Check your plan on the billing page if you need more headroom.
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 registered itself), invite it instead of recreating it:
- Open Connections and click Browse directory (
/connections/directory). - 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.
- Click Connect on a store's card.
This creates a connection in the Invited state. The button changes to Invite sent. The retailer then sees the request in their own admin and can accept or decline it.
One open connection per retailer
Stockisto blocks duplicate connections. If you already have a non-inactive connection to a retailer, a new invite is rejected with a conflict that names the existing status. Re-inviting only works after a connection has gone Inactive.
4. Approve a retailer who applies to join
Retailers can apply to your network from your public locator. Applications arrive as unpublished retailer records with a Requested connection. They are not yet on your locator.
- Review them under Retailers in the Pending join requests section. Each row carries a Join request badge.
- Click Approve to publish the retailer and set the connection to Active. Approving also prepares a claim link you can send the store, so they can manage their own listing. Click Reject to decline the application.
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 connection requests.
- They accept, moving the connection to Active (it now appears on your locator), or they decline, moving it to Inactive. A declining retailer can leave a note.
Managing active connections
Once a connection is Active, you manage it from the Connections page.
Pause and resume
- Pause an active connection to 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 have put on hold.
Assign a tier
Each connection row has a tier dropdown with the values Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, or No tier. The tier is a partnership label you control. It does not change how retailers sort on your locator.
Three things called tier
The connection tier is a plain label. It is separate from your Stockisto subscription plan, and from the partner tiers with benefits described in the Campaigns and PRM guide.
To sort a store first on your locator, mark it as featured in Locator config. See the Sharing and groups guide.
Read the visibility signals
Click Details on a connection row to open the Connection detail panel. Its Visibility signals section shows:
- Geo / coverage: whether the retailer has a reliable map position.
- Freshness / data age: how long since the retailer last updated its profile. Stale listings score lower.
- Assortment confidence: Inferred when the retailer has stock data on file.
- Availability confidence: how sure Stockisto is about the retailer's stock status.
- Data sources: where the retailer's data comes from.
Use these signals to spot retailers with thin or stale data. The dashboard's data-freshness card lists stale retailers and lets you click Send refresh request to ask them to update their listing.
Retailer groups
Groups let you carve your network into subsets that your locator can filter on, for example a "Premium partners" view or a regional cut. Manage them under Groups (/network/groups).
Manual groups
A manual group is a hand-picked list of retailers:
- Click New group, give it a name and an optional description, and choose Manual.
- Open the group and add retailers from the dropdown. Only retailers already in your network can be added. If a store is not connected to you, add it to your network first.
- Remove a member at any time. Removing a retailer from a group never affects the underlying connection.
Automatic groups
An automatic group resolves its members at query time by matching service tags instead of a fixed list. When you create an automatic group you choose one or more tags. Any retailer in your network whose locations carry a matching tag becomes a member. There is no list to maintain.
Automatic groups need at least one tag
An automatic group must be created with at least one tag, otherwise it cannot resolve members. Manual groups have no such requirement.
Using a group on your locator
Every group has a Group ID. Append it to your locator URL to filter results to that group:
?groupId=YOUR_GROUP_ID
The group detail page shows the ID next to a Copy ID button and the ready-made ?groupId=... snippet. See the Sharing and groups guide for the full filtering model.
Deleting a group
Deleting a group removes the group and its member assignments. The retailers themselves stay in your network and on your locator. Member assignments are not recoverable, so re-create the group if you delete it by mistake.
Removing a retailer
To take a retailer off your locator you have two 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 and groups guide: who sees your locator and how groups filter it.
- Analytics guide: measure how your network performs.