Blog · 14 November 2026

How to Find Resellers and Stockists for Your Brand, City by City

For wholesalers and brands: build lists of shops by category and city, plan sales routes with coordinates and compare cities before you expand.

If you sell through shops, salons, cafés or clinics, growth depends on finding the right stockists. Trade fairs and distributor introductions help, but they are slow and uneven. A list of every relevant business in a city, with an address, a phone number and coordinates, lets you plan expansion the way a good field sales team would: methodically, district by district.

Start from who already sells products like yours

Before downloading anything, write down which types of businesses could stock your product. A natural cosmetics brand might target hair salons, beauty salons, pharmacies and gift shops. A coffee roaster might target cafés, restaurants and delis. A hardware wholesaler might target building supply stores and tradespeople. Think about where your end customer already shops, not only the obvious category.

Then rank those categories by fit. Your best first stockists are usually independent businesses that choose their own suppliers, rather than chain branches that buy centrally.

Build category × city lists

Download one list per category and city. ToucanLeads organises its data exactly this way, so beauty salons in Dubai or cafés in Mexico City are a single download with name, address, phone, email, website, socials and coordinates. Filters such as “has phone” or “has email” keep only the rows you can contact, and you only pay for the rows you download.

Keep the categories in separate files at first. Response rates and order sizes often differ a lot between, say, salons and pharmacies, and you want to know which channel works before you mix them. Check the website and socials columns too: a shop that regularly posts products on Instagram is more likely to promote a new brand to its own customers.

Use coordinates to plan routes

Coordinates turn a list into a territory plan. Import the file into any mapping tool that accepts a CSV with latitude and longitude, and you will see at a glance where your target businesses cluster.

• Group stores into daily routes by district, so a rep can visit 10 to 15 shops in a day instead of crossing the city.
• Spot dense shopping streets and malls where one trip covers many prospects.
• Plan sample drops and follow-up visits around existing stockists, so new accounts sit close to your delivery routes.
• Mark each business as visited, interested, stocking or not interested directly in the sheet.
• Share district files with distributors or agents so each one has a clearly defined area.

Distance also shapes your terms. If most target shops in a city sit within a few districts, one delivery route can serve them and smaller minimum orders become viable. If they are spread out, you may need a local distributor or a higher minimum order to make deliveries pay.

Compare cities before you expand

Category × city lists also help you decide where to go next. Before committing to a new market, compare the number of target businesses in each city, how many have a phone or an email, and how many have a website or active social profiles. A city with many independent salons and good contact coverage is often a better first step than a bigger city where most targets are hard to reach.

This matters most across countries with different habits. In Turkey or Brazil, many small shops run on a mobile number and WhatsApp, so phone coverage matters more than email. In the UK or Canada, email and website coverage may be the better signal. ToucanLeads covers the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, the Gulf, Turkey, Latin America and Brazil, so you can compare markets using the same fields before you book a flight.

Reach out like a supplier, not a spammer

Shop owners hear from many suppliers. Make yours easy to evaluate: who you are, what the product is, why it fits their shop and their customers, your wholesale terms in one line, and an offer of samples or a short visit. Mention a nearby stockist if you have one and they agree to be named.

Call or visit independents in person where that is normal, and use email for chains and for markets you can’t visit yet. Keep a simple record of every contact, include an opt-out in written messages and respect it. One good stockist in a district often makes the next conversation on the same street much easier.