How to find a distributor
A practical guide to running a distributor search properly — defining what you need, building a longlist, verifying what you are told, and negotiating terms you can live with.
Most distributor appointments that go wrong were avoidable. The warning signs were there before anyone signed — in a coverage claim nobody checked, a registration held in the wrong name, a portfolio conflict that surfaced eighteen months later. The problem is rarely judgement. It is that the search was run on introductions and intuition rather than a process.
This is that process. It applies whether you are entering Saudi Arabia, Vietnam or Poland, and whether you sell surgical devices or industrial lubricants. The regulatory specifics change; the sequence does not.
1. Define what you actually need
The most common failure in a distributor search happens before the search starts. A company decides it needs "a distributor in Indonesia" and begins asking around. Six weeks later it has met four companies, likes two of them, and has no way of telling which is right — because it never defined what right meant.
A usable brief answers five questions. Write them down before you contact anyone, because the answers will change how you search, not just how you choose.
What are you actually selling into?
Not your product category — the channel. Hospital procurement behaves nothing like retail pharmacy, which behaves nothing like government tender. A distributor can be excellent in one and absent from another while describing itself as covering all three.
What coverage do you genuinely require?
National coverage is expensive and often unnecessary at entry. If eighty per cent of your addressable demand sits in three cities, a strong regional partner may outperform a national one that treats you as line item four hundred.
What capability does your product demand?
Cold chain, field engineers, installation, calibration, after-sales, financing of capital equipment, regulatory registration capacity. Each one eliminates candidates. Be specific about which are essential and which are preferences — conflating the two is how shortlists end up empty.
What is your position on exclusivity?
Decide before you are asked. Exclusivity is the single most contested term in most distribution agreements, and the answer you improvise in a meeting will follow you for years. Know what you would grant, over what territory, for what performance, and for how long.
What size of partner fits your volume?
Large distributors bring reach and treat small principals as a rounding error. Small distributors bring attention and may lack the balance sheet to stock you. The right answer depends on where your revenue would rank inside their portfolio — a question worth asking directly.
You should be able to hand it to someone who has never met you and have them reject candidates on your behalf without asking questions. If they would need to check with you, it is not finished.
2. Build a longlist from real sources
Most longlists are built from whoever is easiest to find, which systematically favours distributors with good marketing over distributors with good operations. These are not the same companies.
Sources worth using, roughly in order of signal quality:
Regulatory registers
Where your product requires registration, the regulator usually publishes who holds licences and authorisations. This is the highest-quality source available: it is factual, current and impossible to exaggerate.
Your competitors' partners
Whoever distributes a comparable product already has the channel relationships, the regulatory capability and the customer access. Some will be conflicted. Some will not, and those are among your strongest candidates.
Customs and import records
In many markets, import data is available commercially and shows who is physically bringing in comparable goods, in what volume, and how consistently. It is difficult to overstate a shipment record.
Trade associations and chambers
Membership lists are a reasonable starting point, though membership signals willingness to pay dues rather than capability. Useful for coverage, weak for quality.
Trade exhibitions
Exhibitor and visitor lists concentrate the active players in one document. The event itself is better for qualifying candidates you already identified than for discovering new ones.
Customers themselves
Hospitals, workshops, retailers and contractors know who serves them well and who does not. This is the most reliable source of all and the least used, because it requires reaching people who owe you nothing.
A longlist of thirty to sixty companies is normal for a mid-sized market. If you have eight, you have not searched; you have collected referrals. If you have three hundred, you have not filtered.
3. Screen against your criteria
Screening is where the brief earns its keep. Take the essential capabilities and apply them as hard filters — a distributor without cold chain is not a candidate for a cold chain product, regardless of how impressive they are otherwise.
Then rank what remains on the preferences. The point is to produce an ordered list with reasoning attached, so that when someone asks why candidate four sits below candidate two, there is an answer that is not "gut feel".
- Weight your criteria before you score anyone, not after
- Score every candidate on the same fields, even where data is missing
- Record what you could not find out — gaps are findings
- Keep the rejected candidates and why, because circumstances change
- Let the first company you met set the standard for the rest
- Score on impressions from a website or a brochure
- Drop a criterion because no candidate satisfies it
- Shortlist more than six — you will not diligence them properly
4. Verify what you have been told
This is the stage that separates a search from a shopping trip, and the one most often skipped. Distributors present themselves favourably, which is not dishonesty — it is sales. Your job is to establish which claims survive contact with evidence.
Five claims are worth verifying on every candidate, because they are the ones that most often turn out to be softer than stated.
Ask a candidate to describe a line they lost and why. Distributors who answer specifically and without defensiveness are usually the ones who understand their own business. Distributors who claim they have never lost one are either new or not answering.
5. Approach and qualify
By this point you should have four to six candidates. The approach matters more than most principals expect, because good distributors are being approached constantly and are selecting you as much as you are selecting them.
Lead with what makes the opportunity real: existing traction elsewhere, the marketing support you will fund, the margin structure, and why you have chosen their market now. Vague opportunity language reads as a company that has not committed, and serious distributors decline those quickly.
Meet in person if the deal warrants it. A market visit that covers four candidates in a week, with warehouse walk-throughs rather than boardroom presentations, will tell you more than three months of correspondence. Ask to see the facility. The ones who hesitate are telling you something.
6. Negotiate terms you can live with
Distribution agreements are easier to enter than to exit, and in several jurisdictions considerably easier. The terms that matter most are rarely the ones that get the most discussion.
Exclusivity scope
Exclusive over what — the whole portfolio, a category, a single product line? Over what territory? "Exclusive distributor" without a defined scope is an argument waiting to happen.
Performance conditions
Exclusivity should be earned continuously. Tie it to volume, coverage or activity targets, with a defined consequence if they are missed. Without this, exclusivity is permanent by default.
Term and termination
Understand what ending the agreement actually requires in that jurisdiction, including any compensation exposure. In some markets local law overrides what the contract says about notice.
Registration ownership
Where products require registration, whose name it sits in decides who controls the market. If the distributor holds it, changing partners can mean re-registering from the beginning.
Stock and pricing
Minimum order quantities, stock cover, transfer pricing, and who carries currency risk. These determine whether the partner has any real incentive to sell rather than to hold.
Data and reporting
Sell-through data by customer and region, not just sell-in. Without it you cannot tell whether your product is reaching the market or sitting in a warehouse.
Distribution and agency law varies enormously, and several jurisdictions give agents protections that survive whatever the contract says. This is not a document to adapt from a template you used elsewhere.
7. What happens after signing
The appointment is the beginning of the work, not the end of it. Most underperforming distributor relationships are not badly chosen partners; they are well-chosen partners who were never properly onboarded and then never properly managed.
Fund the launch. Train the sales team, in person, more than once. Agree a reporting rhythm and hold it. Visit the market at least twice in the first year. And review performance against the targets you set at signing, early enough that a correction is still possible.
Set the first review at six months, not twelve. By month twelve, a relationship that is not working has usually calcified.
- Write the brief before you search. It determines everything downstream.
- Build the longlist from registers, import data and customers — not referrals.
- Verify coverage, registration, certification, conflicts and finances. Every candidate.
- Negotiate exclusivity scope, performance conditions and registration ownership above all else.
- Onboard properly and review at six months.
Longlisting and verification are the slow parts. If your market is one of the four on Hub, the profiles are already built and checked. If it is not, our consulting practice runs the whole search — brief through to a ranked shortlist, and the introductions and negotiation support afterwards if you want them.