How to Show Dealers and Stockists on Your Shopify Store

A customer discovers your brand online, decides they want it, and then looks for the nearest place to buy it - your own store, an authorized dealer, or a retailer that stocks your products. If your Shopify store can't answer that question, a competitor's page will, or Google will guess for you.

A dealer and stockist page closes that gap. It shows shoppers exactly where your products are sold in the real world and turns "where can I buy this?" into an actual store visit. This guide explains what such a page is and how to set one up on Shopify, step by step.

Dealer, Stockist, Store Locator: What's the Difference?

These three terms cause more confusion than they should because they all describe the same underlying tool: a searchable, map-based directory of physical places that sell your products. The label just changes with the industry and the business model.

• Store locator - used by brands with their own retail outlets. Customer intent: "Find a shop run by this brand near me."
• Dealer locator - common in hardware, electronics, automotive, and industrial brands. Customer intent: "Find an authorized seller of this brand."
• Stockist page - common in fashion, beauty, and food and beverage. Customer intent: "Find a retailer that stocks this brand."
• Where-to-buy page - used by D2C brands that sell mostly online but also through select partners. Customer intent: "Find anywhere I can buy this offline."

The practical takeaway: you don't need separate pages for dealers and stockists. One locator with good filtering covers all of these intents at once.

Why Your Shopify Store Needs a Dealer or Stockist Page

If you sell through any channel beyond your own website - retail partners, authorized dealers, wholesale accounts, pop-up locations - your customers will look for your products offline. When they do, they search for "where to buy [your brand]" or "[your brand] near me."

Without a dedicated page, you hand that answer to someone else. Either an individual retailer surfaces your brand in their own marketing (if they bother), or the search engine pieces together an answer from whatever it can find. Both leave you with no control over the experience and no data about who is searching.

A dealer or stockist page captures that intent on your own site and points it where you want it to go. It also reassures your existing partners that you actively support their sales - which matters when you are recruiting new dealers. We covered the revenue side of this in detail in How a Store Locator Increases Offline Sales.

How to Set Up a Dealer and Stockist Page

You don't need a developer or a complex project to do this well. The setup comes down to a few decisions, and getting them right from the start saves you from rebuilding later.

Choose your method

You have two realistic options. A manual page is free but limited: you create a Shopify page and list locations as plain text. It works if you have a small number of locations that rarely change, but there is no map, no search, no filtering, and no analytics - treat it as a stopgap. A store locator app is the better route for anything beyond a handful of locations, giving you an interactive map, location search, filtering, customization, and analytics from one dashboard. Most apps offer a free plan or trial, so you can try before committing. If you want to compare the main options first, we break them down in Shopify Store Locator Apps: Comparison & Review.

Get your location data in order

For each dealer, stockist, or retail partner, plan to include the name, full address, phone number, a website or directions link, opening hours, and a short note where useful ("Carries full product line", "Authorized service center", "Seasonal hours"). If you already keep partners in a spreadsheet, you don't have to re-enter them one by one - bulk CSV import lets you upload the whole list at once and update it the same way. And if you are still recruiting, a built-in dealer registration form lets new retailers add themselves, so the list grows without manual data entry.

Make it searchable, not just visible

A flat list of pins is not enough. The filters that matter most are product (essential when not every retailer carries your full range), location type (flagship store vs. authorized dealer vs. seasonal pop-up), and availability (open now, open weekends). Product search is the one to prioritize: a shopper who can confirm a location stocks the exact item they want is far more likely to make the trip than one left guessing.

Make it look like your store

Your locator should feel like part of your site, not a third-party widget bolted on. Most customization should be possible through the app's built-in settings, allowing you to match your color scheme, map pin styles, and preferred layout (map plus list, list only, or map only). For merchants who want even more control, custom CSS can be used to fine-tune the design. A locator that blends naturally with the rest of your store feels more trustworthy and easier to use - and the more seamlessly it fits into the shopping experience, the more confidently customers act on it.

Publish it where people will find it

Embed the locator on a Shopify page with a clear, SEO-friendly URL - /pages/where-to-buy, /pages/find-a-store, /pages/store-locator or /pages/stockists - matching how your customers think about it. Then add the page to your main navigation or footer. A locator buried three clicks deep can't do its job, however well you built it.

You don't have to limit it to a single page, either. A dedicated page is best for SEO and for customers who arrive specifically looking for a store, but a floating widget - a button that opens the map from anywhere on your site - keeps "where to buy" within reach while someone is browsing products. Many brands use both: the page as the destination they can link and rank, and the widget as an always-available shortcut. Progus Store Locator supports both layouts, so you can match the format to where your customers actually are.

What Makes a Dealer Locator Actually Work

Not every locator earns the visit. The difference comes down to whether each feature solves a real problem the shopper or the merchant has. Here is what separates a page that drives store traffic from one that gets ignored.

• The shopper can't find anything fast enough. People searching for a store are usually impatient and often on the move. Search by city, postcode, or address is the baseline, but the page should also detect the visitor's location and show the nearest results the moment it loads. Autocomplete and a distance filter remove the last bits of friction. Every step you cut gets the customer to an answer before they give up.
• The nearest store doesn't stock what they want. This is the most common reason a store visit ends in disappointment - and the most overlooked feature in most locators. If your retailers carry different parts of your range, shoppers need to filter by product, not just by location. Progus Store Locator solves this with product search: you link products to the locations that stock them, and a customer can search for a specific item and see only the dealers that actually carry it. That one capability is the difference between a confident trip and a wasted one.
• They're on a phone, halfway out the door. Most locator searches happen on mobile, often from someone already out looking for somewhere to go right now. Tap-to-call, tap-for-directions, and a layout that needs no pinching or zooming aren't nice-to-haves - they decide whether the search turns into a visit.
• The merchant is flying blind. A good locator is also a data source. Built-in analytics and heatmaps show where customers are searching from and which areas generate demand, while searches that return no results in a region are a direct signal of where to expand next. Instead of guessing where to recruit your next dealer, you let real search behavior point you there.
• Keeping the list current is a chore. Partnerships change, stores open and close, and a stale list erodes trust fast. The page has to reflect reality at all times, so updating it can't require a developer. Bulk CSV import and Google Sheets sync mean your team edits one spreadsheet and the map updates itself - and a dealer registration form lets new partners add themselves, so the list grows without manual data entry.

One more practical snag worth flagging: many locators rely on a Google Maps API key, which can throw errors or add surprise billing as your traffic grows. Tools that work without one (Progus among them) avoid that headache entirely. We cover this in Google Maps API Error? Try Progus (No API Needed).  

The "Where to Buy" SEO Opportunity

A dealer or stockist page meets demand most Shopify stores leave unanswered - in two channels at once: classic search and the new generation of AI-powered answers. The locator is the tool; the page you build around it is what does the SEO work, so it's worth setting up deliberately.

Capturing high-intent local search

When someone searches "where to buy [your brand] in [city]" or "[your brand] dealer near me," they are close to buying. They are not researching - they are looking for a place to go. The goal is to make sure your own site answers that question, rather than leaving it to a retailer's page or to whatever Google can piece together.

The most reliable way to do that is to treat the locator page as real SEO content, not just a place to drop a map. Give it a descriptive title and meta description built around "where to buy [brand]," add an intro paragraph that names your product categories and the regions you cover, and write supporting text that a search engine can read directly. Then link to the page from your main navigation and footer so it accumulates internal authority over time. The map helps customers; the surrounding content is what helps you rank.

Showing up in AI-powered search

"Where to buy" is increasingly answered not by a list of blue links but by an AI assistant - Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and the AI shopping agents now reading product catalogs directly. These systems pull from structured, clearly written content, so the same principle applies: the clearer and more text-based your page is, the easier it is for an AI system to read and cite.

In practice that means stating in plain text which products you offer, where they're sold, and which regions you serve, rather than relying on the map alone to carry that information. "Where can I buy [specific product] near me" is exactly the kind of question these assistants are being asked, so spelling out product and location details in readable content gives you the best chance of being the source they quote.
If you're thinking more broadly about this shift, we go deeper in How to Optimize Shopify Product Data for AI Shopping.

How to Get Started

The simplest way to add a dealer and stockist page is with a tool built for it. At Progus, we create apps that help online stores grow - both online and offline.

Progus Store Locator helps you:

• Add a searchable map of your dealers and stockists - as a full page or a floating widget
• Let shoppers search by product, so they find the dealer that actually carries what they want
• Import locations in bulk, sync with Google Sheets and Shopify Locations
• Collect new partners automatically with a built-in dealer registration form
• Customize maps, markers and filters to match your brand - with no API key required

It also includes analytics and heatmaps, CSV export, and multilingual support, so the page keeps working as your network grows. 

→ Install Progus Store Locator for free

Final Thoughts

Showing your dealers and stockists on Shopify is one of the simplest ways to connect online discovery with offline purchases. Pick a tool that handles product search and keeps your locations easy to manage, add your partners, brand it to match your store, and link it somewhere people will actually find it. If shoppers are searching for where to buy your products - give them a clear answer.