Difference between Distributor and Stockist

Key difference: Distributor and Stockist both distribute the goods, but, a distributor distributes the goods without any planning, whereas a stockist distributes the goods with a plan.

Distributors Distributor basically distributes the goods in a bulk quantity to the respective parties, which comprises of retailers and suppliers. Their supply of services includes the product information, estimates, technical supports, after-sales services and credits to the customers, through a channel management system. These channels are interdependent organizations generally designed by firms with the help of proper path-orientation.

They are defined as ‘an entity that buys non-competing products or product lines, warehouses them, and resells them to retailers or directly to the end users or customers’. They supply goods directly to the stores or other businesses, which are then sold to the consumers. They provide services with strong manpower and cash support to the supplier or manufacturer's promotional efforts. They are supposed to maintain an exclusive buying agreement, which limits their participants and enable them to cover a certain territory.

A stockist is ‘a retailer that stocks goods for a particular type of sale’. Stockist is also a distributor, who depends upon some factors like time and place. They store goods in the form of stocks, and then distribute them to the respective users.

They store bulk amount of goods and products. The link between the manufacturer and the stockist is maintained by the manufacturer’s employees, who manage all the distribution, purchases, labor management, and supervises the delivery process. They handle all the relations with the distributor and sometimes push the stock onto the distributor to meet their sales targets and basically perform one type of business at the regular intervals of time. They make available of the products at the time of shortage of resources. It is observed that the general store managers stock the goods in their storage chambers in order to sell the products at a specified fixed time.

Comparison between Distributor and Stockist:

	Distributor	Stockist
Who are they	A distributor is a person who distributes and supplies the products to the other respective authorities.	A stockist is one who stocks the goods.
Dependency on factors	They are not dependent on any factors.	They are dependent on the factors such as season, time and place.
Functions	They are basic distributors who supply the products to their respective user.	They are also suppliers, but they first store the goods, and then distribute.
Roles	They can be manufacturers	They can be retailers and distributors.
Time factor	They supply the products at regular intervals, and in continuity.	They make the products available at the time of shortage.