Distributors & Importers
Your profit disappears in the little mistakes.
Stock that sits too long. An order shipped from the wrong warehouse. A retailer order nobody noticed was stuck. A supplier catalog that takes hours to clean up and a launch that is blocked because one retailer field was never mapped. You sit between suppliers and business buyers, and the work between them is where the margin goes. mPorts gives you the software to run your own marketplace for your buyers, and one place to run every order that follows — without a person typing it in again — with AI that works on the same information your team does.
The shape of the problem
A distributor carries other companies’ products across many suppliers. The catalog, the orders and the shipping each work on their own; the difficulty is making them behave as one business rather than three that someone has to match up by hand.
Distribution margin is thin enough that small mistakes show up directly in the result. A SKU that sits too long, a shipping route that is quietly expensive, an order shipped from the wrong place: individually small, collectively the whole margin. Seeing that means the costs have to sit next to the orders, not in a spreadsheet assembled afterwards.
From a supplier’s catalog to a retailer’s confirmation
One operation, whichever side the work starts on. Suppliers list, buyers and retailers order, and everything in between is a named stage rather than a hand-off.
Supply arrives from
And every order goes through the same steps
- Onboard
- Normalize
- List
- Order
- Route
- Fulfill
- Confirm
Leaving a record of
The questions a distributor asks, answered from one set of records
Supplier data, retailer launch, inventory, orders, fulfillment, cost and margin are one thread in mPorts OMS. These are the questions it answers today.
Which supplier products are costing us to hold?
Stock age by SKU and warehouse, with the storage allocated to each SKU from the warehouse’s bill.
Which inventory has sat too long?
The units in the oldest age band, by SKU and warehouse, and the oldest lot on shelf.
Which retailer orders lost money?
Order profit and loss per order: revenue less commission, product cost and shipping, filterable by retailer.
Which product launch is blocked, and why?
The launch workspace’s readiness verdict, and the issues affecting multiple products.
What did the warehouse bill us this month?
By fee type and warehouse, from the provider’s own records.
The work a distributor actually does
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Supplier product onboarding
Supplier accounts, listings and catalog import, so a new supplier is a set of records rather than a spreadsheet.
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Clean up supplier catalogs and launch them
Categorization and attribute mapping across the catalog you operate, so ten suppliers describe a product one way.
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Retailer and buyer distribution
Buyer groups with contract pricing, quoting and purchasing for business buyers; retailer channels and EDI for the retailers you supply.
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Orders and inventory
Every order from every channel in one queue, with a limit on how much each channel may sell so nothing is sold twice.
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Routing and fulfillment
Which location ships each order, what happens when that plan fails, and the shipment and tracking that follow.
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Exceptions and AI operations
Orders that stop moving come to the top with a reason and a next step. AI works from the same order and inventory records, and acts with your approval.
One retailer rejection, worked end to end
A retailer rejects a new listing because a required attribute is missing.
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Signal
The retailer channel returns the listing with the requirement it failed.
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What mPorts shows
The retailer’s required attributes beside the product data from the supplier, so the missing field is visible rather than inferred from an error code.
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Investigation
Whether the attribute exists in the supplier’s catalog under another name, or has to be captured.
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Recommendation
Map the supplier field to the retailer attribute, or fill the value once for the category.
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Approval
A person confirms the mapping. It applies to every product in the category, so it is a decision, not a keystroke.
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Action
The listing is sent to the retailer again, through the same steps as any launch.
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Record
The rejection, the mapping and the relaunch stay with the product, so the next supplier’s catalog does not repeat it.
Two products, one middle position
mPorts Distribution is the marketplace: your suppliers, your business buyers, your domain, with quoting, contract pricing, purchasing and settlement built in.
mPorts OMS is the operation after the order exists: orders, inventory, fulfillment, shipping and returns across every channel you supply, including retailers that have nothing to do with the marketplace. Most distributors start with one, and the two are separable.
- Distribution creates the order; OMS operates what follows
- Retailer EDI and marketplace channels arrive in the same queue
- Cost and margin sit inside the operation, per SKU and per lane
- Your ERP and warehouse systems keep running; mPorts connects to them
Where to start
If finding and serving business buyers is the constraint, start with mPorts Distribution. If the orders already arrive from retailers and marketplaces and operating them is the constraint, start with mPorts OMS. If both are true, start where the manual work is heaviest today.
Questions buyers ask
We supply retailers over EDI and sell to smaller buyers directly. Is that one operation or two?
One. Retailer EDI documents and marketplace orders arrive in the same queue in mPorts OMS, and the inventory, fulfillment and shipping behind them are operated in one place.
Our suppliers send catalogs in every shape imaginable. Does mPorts fix that?
It gives you the place to do it once. Catalog import, categorization and attribute mapping happen in the marketplace you operate, so each supplier’s data is cleaned up once, into your catalog, rather than typed in again for every retailer.
Do we have to replace our ERP or warehouse system?
No. mPorts is designed to run alongside the systems you already have and to connect to them. Whether your specific system is connected today is confirmed with you during scoping.
What does the AI do for a distributor?
It works from the orders, inventory and shipping records mPorts OMS already holds: it can find what is stuck and why, recommend the fix, and carry out the approved step the same way a person would. Nothing is applied without approval where your rules require it.