Create reseller relationships: an overview (Enterprise)

If you are an administrator for a reseller hub, WebSphere Commerce provides the ability for you to host stores for your resellers. Creating and managing these hosted stores is the basis of reseller relationships in WebSphere Commerce. (Note that resellers can use the Store Creation wizard to create stores. They will likely access the wizard from a link offered on your site.)

The process of creating an extended site store is as follows:

  1. The reseller registers with your store as a customer in the store.
    This step registers the reseller organization and a reseller representative with your store.
  2. The reseller requests a store. The request for a store is submitted through an online form available in your store. Submitting the request for a store sends an e-mail to the person in your organization responsible for the creation and management of stores. In WebSphere Commerce, the person in your organization responsible for the creation and management of stores is called a Channel Manager.
  3. The Channel Manager or Seller Administrator uses the Store Creation wizard to create a store for any organization in which this role has authority channel management or administrator authority. To access the Store Creation wizard, select New Store from the Channel menu, or select New from the stores list. Both of these options are within the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator.
  4. The Channel Manager sends the reseller an e-mail indicating that the hosted store has been created and the reseller can now access the store.

If the newly deployed store is created in Closed state, the reseller has access to the store but customers do not. While the store is closed, the reseller can add a logo to the store pages, choose products to sell in the hosted store, add products to sell in the store, and change or adjust prices on the products. The Channel Manager must next change the store state to Resume so that the reseller can open the store.

Related tasks

(C) Copyright IBM Corporation 1996, 2006. All Rights Reserved.