Sales Rep
Connecting with your retail clients
To get your brand(s) to display on a retail client’s FurnishNearMe Shop, you must first Connect with that retailer. Connecting also allows you and the client to message each other on the platform, curate and fulfill Purchase Orders together, and more.
How Connecting with a retailer works
You can request a Connection directly through FurnishNearMe:
If the retailer is Inactive on the platform, your connection request is automatically approved.
If the retailer is Active on the platform, they will need to manually approve your request before the connection is finalized.
Retailers can also initiate Connection requests with you. Once either side initiates a request, approval must occur before the Connection is complete.
If a request remains pending, contact our team to get help moving the process forward.
How to Connect with a retailer
1
Find them
First you'll need to find the retailer you want to Connect with.
Press the menu in the top-left corner of the page.
Selectlocation_on Retailer Directory.
Search for your client using the Map View or List View, and click into their listing.
2
Select the brands they carry
Once you've found your client, you can indicate which brands they are allowed to sell.
Products from these brands will appear in the retailer's Shop and be marked as available to buy/order. You can set limits on which products the retailer can sell using Product Distribution Controls.
Select the brands the client is allowed to sell from the available checkboxes.
Submit the Connection by pressing Set as active client.
3
Send them an invitation to join FurnishNearMe
If the retailer is not already active on FurnishNearMe, you can send them an invitation to join so you can Connect with them on the platform.
What happens after you Connect
Once your Connection with a retail client is established, you unlock the following capabilities:
Your products will show up on their Shop
Your brand(s) will be displayed on the retailer’s FurnishNearMe Shop, including:
Products that have been tagged as In-Stock
Products that are Available To Order from your vendor’s catalog
These products will also appear in local search results on FurnishNearMe for shoppers in the retailer’s area. By default, retailers can show ALL the products in a catalog on their Shop once you Connect with them. If you want to change how much they can show, you can with Product Distribution Controls.
In-Stock products receive a boost in search result rankings, so it's advantageous to ensure they're marked accordingly. Ideally, your active clients will label their in-stock items as such on FurnishNearMe, but if they don’t, you have the option to do it on their behalf.
Learn more about marking products as In-Stock for clients.
Your client will be placed on the Dealer Locator
The retailer will automatically be listed on your vendor’s Dealer Locator on FurnishNearMe. This helps consumers find the store when browsing products by brand. Only retailers with physical store locations are included.
Your client can shop all your products in Wholesale Shopping
Active clients will gain access to shop your vendor's catalog in Wholesale Shopping—a powerful tool for retailers to browse, filter, and save products available in your catalog(s). They can also see wholesale pricing, warehouse inventory levels, detailed product specs, and more.
Learn more about Wholesale Shopping.
Merchandise collaboratively with Product Lists
You will be able to curate and share lists of products with your active clients that can be used to formulate Purchase Orders, suggest slot replacements, and more. Client buyers can collaborate with you on these lists in real-time to keep merchandising conversations going.
Learn more about Product Lists.
Share training videos with sales staff via the Training Center
The Training Center is your tool for creating and sharing product training videos with your active Connected clients. It helps you keep retail sales teams informed and prepared to sell your brand—which is especially useful in cases where in-person training isn’t feasible or timely.
Learn more about the Training Center.
Send immersive bulk announcements to clients
Connecting with clients on FurnishNearMe automatically grows your FurnishNearMe contact list, which can later be used to send bulk announcements about new product introductions, specials, closeouts, and more.
Unlike traditional email, these announcements are tied directly in with your interactive catalog on FurnishNearMe, making them instantly actionable—with only a few clicks, clients can explore new group releases and begin adding items to Product Lists, helping you move quickly toward building Purchase Orders, all within minutes.
Connecting with clients FAQs
Below are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about Connecting with retail clients.
A Connection is how we mark that you and another entity on the FurnishNearMe platform have an established working relationship. Once that Connection has been made it unlocks tons of tools and features that you and that entity can use together.
It's likely because the entity you requested a Connection from hasn't approved your request yet.
If a request remains pending for a long time, contact us and our team may step in to move the process forward.
Active accounts have users on them, while Inactive accounts don't have any users on them yet.
Until someone from a business signs up and takes control of their account on FurnishNearMe, that account will be unmanaged and Inactive.
If you notice that somebody you know has an Inactive account on our platform, we encourage you to invite them to sign up and take control of their account on FurnishNearMe so they can start using all of its incredible tools, too!
If certain retailers don't appear in the location_onRetailer Directory, they may not yet be listed in the FurnishNearMe database.
Contact us and we’ll work with you to get them added to our platform.
Once you've completed all of the essential setup steps, collaborative tools will become available for you and your clients to use.
NOTE: The client will need to be Active on the platform in order to use the tool(s) with you.
