DTC brands
Your first twelve doors matter more than a big brand's five hundred.
Add a short, fast-changing stockist list to a site that has always sold direct, without losing the sale to a wrong address.
Bring your location data
CSV import, Google Sheets sync or dashboard edits.
Shape the visitor journey
Search, filters, hours, directions and custom actions.
Match your site
85+ available settings, markers and provider map styles.
What your network looks like
A handful of wholesale doors, some shop-in-shop and pop-up residencies with an end date, a market stall or two, and your own site still doing most of the volume.
Why a generic map falls short
A brand with twelve stockists has the opposite problem to one with five hundred. Every pin is a relationship you can name, one closed pop-up is eight percent of the map wrong, and a generic locator built for scale gives you bulk tools for a list you edit by hand.
What visitors need to do
- Take a residency or pop-up down the day it closes, because a short list makes one dead pin a large share of the map
- Keep your own site as the answer when nothing is nearby, since that is still where most of the order value is
- Show which stockist carries which SKUs, as a first wholesale account usually takes three products as a test
- Move from a spreadsheet to a live list without a developer, then keep editing it the same way
How Handled covers it
- A no-results fallback to your online stockists, so a visitor with nothing nearby lands back on your own site
- Filterable tags per location for the SKUs each account took, and for pop-ups against permanent doors
- CSV import or Google Sheets sync, so the stockist list stays in the sheet you already keep
- Search analytics showing where people looked and found nothing, which is the list of towns to sell into next
Not every dtc brands business is the same
The first wholesale doors
A dozen accounts you can name, each taking three products as a test. The relationship is personal and the buyer might text you. Getting the SKUs right per door matters more here than anywhere else, because a customer sent to the one account that did not take that product is a bad first impression for the shop as well as for you.
Pop-ups and residencies
Six weeks in a shared space, a Christmas market, a residency inside a bigger brand's store. Each one has an end date, and on a map with twelve pins one dead location is a large share of the whole thing. The discipline is an end date column and the habit of taking the pin down the morning after.
Markets and recurring events
A stall that exists on Saturdays and nowhere the rest of the week. It is a genuine place to buy from and it is not a shop, so it needs real trading hours rather than a nine to five, and it needs to be honest that Tuesday is not a day to turn up hoping.
Online retailers and marketplaces
Most of the revenue is still online, so the stockists that matter commercially are often not on the map at all. They belong on their own tab, and they are the answer for the large majority of visitors who have nothing within reach of them.
Setting it up
1. Write down the twelve, honestly
List every account a customer can buy from today, with the products each one took and, for anything temporary, the date it ends. If a door is not restocking, leave it off. A short map has nowhere to hide a wrong pin.
2. Keep it in a sheet and sync it
Use Google Sheets sync rather than editing locations by hand. You will change this list far more often per pin than a brand with five hundred stockists changes theirs, and the review step before changes go live catches the accidental deletion.
3. Set the online fallback before launch
Decide what a visitor with nothing nearby sees. Point the no-results view at your online stockists tab and your own shop, because at this stage of a brand that path is worth more per visitor than the map itself.
4. Publish, then read the unmet demand rate
Embed the locator, leave it a month, then open the analytics page. The searches that returned nothing are a ranked list of towns asking for you, and it is the cheapest wholesale prospecting you will do all year.
What to prepare before you publish
You do not need a perfect data system to start. A clean first list is enough to test the visitor journey, then you can keep it current from the workflow that suits your team.
- Location name and address
- Phone, website or booking link
- Categories, products or services
- Opening hours and special hours
- A map provider key
- The page where the locator will be embedded
Questions we get asked
How much does a stockist locator cost for a DTC brand with a dozen doors?
The same $19 a month entry plan applies whether you have twelve stockists or five hundred, after a 7 day free trial with no card required and with no free plan afterwards. Map usage sits on your own Mapbox or Google Maps key and is billed by that provider.
Can a pop-up come off the map automatically the day the residency ends?
No. Nothing expires a location on a date, so the pin has to be removed by you, either in the dashboard or in the synced sheet. On a map with twelve pins that is one edit worth having a reminder for, because a dead pop-up is a large share of a short list.
What does a visitor see when there is no stockist near them?
The no-results view can point at your online stockists tab and your own shop, so the visitor lands somewhere that converts. For a brand still doing most of its volume direct, that path is usually worth more per visitor than the map itself.
Can I add a stockist map to my site without a developer?
Yes. It is an embed snippet you paste into a page on Shopify, Webflow, WordPress or anything else that accepts HTML, and there are over 85 settings for appearance and behaviour so it matches the site without code. No Handled branding appears on any plan.
How do I find out which towns want my brand and have nowhere to buy it?
The analytics page shows an unmet demand rate from searches that returned nothing. Left running for a month it becomes a ranked list of places to sell into, which is the cheapest wholesale prospecting available to a small brand.
Do I need my own map key for a stockist list this small?
Yes, every plan uses your own Mapbox or Google Maps key. At the traffic a young brand sees the usage almost always falls inside the provider's free monthly allowance, and the account stays yours, so nothing about the map is locked to us.
If you need something that is not here
Handled is small enough to build to order. If your trade needs a field, a filter or a behaviour the locator does not have yet, say so and we will tell you honestly whether it is a week away or not something we will do.