Guides › How to find boutiques to carry your brand
How to find boutiques to carry your brand
The best way to get boutiques to carry your brand isn't a bigger list. It's a shorter one. Here's how to build a list of about 30 real stores that fit, using AI for the research and your own eyes for the checking.
- Why a short list wins
- Write your ideal-store profile
- Research stores with AI
- Check every store
- Mistakes to avoid
Why a short list wins
Faire's advice to brands is direct: "A focused retailer list outperforms a wide cold-pitch strategy." A handful of stores that truly fit "will teach you more and convert better than broad outreach to stores that aren't a natural match" (Faire).
Thirty good-fit stores is a list you can actually work. You can look at every one, write each a real note, and follow up without losing track.
Step 1. Write your ideal-store profile
One paragraph: what you make, your retail price range, where you can ship, the kinds of stores that work (and don't), and a few brands you'd sit next to on a shelf. Not sure? Let the AI interview you:
Help me write a one-paragraph ideal-store profile for my brand. Ask me up to 6 questions first: what I make, my retail price range, my best current stores and why they work, regions I can ship to, store types to avoid, and brands I sit next to.
Step 2. Research stores with AI (web search on)
Use ChatGPT, Claude or Grok Bot with web search turned on. Without it, AI will make up stores that sound real. Paste your profile into this prompt:
Using web search, find 30 independent stores in [region] that match this profile: [paste profile]. Only include stores you found a real website or Instagram for in this search. For each one: store name, city, website, Instagram, 2 to 3 brands they carry (from their site), a fit score from 1 to 5, a one-line reason, and a contact route.
Only list an email if you copied it from the store's own website, and put that page's URL next to it. Otherwise write "contact form" or MISSING. Never guess an email. If you can't confirm something, write UNVERIFIED. Leave out chains and these stores I already sell to: [list]. Give me a table I can paste into Google Sheets.
Step 3. Ask the AI to check its own work
Paste the table back in and ask it to open every site:
Open every website URL. Mark each row LIVE (the page loads and shows this store's name and town), DEAD (doesn't load), or WRONG SITE (parked, for sale, or a different business). For each LIVE row, quote the words on the page that show the name and town. If you couldn't open a page, write COULDN'T OPEN.
Then, for every row with an email, open the source URL and confirm the email appears on that page exactly. Mark it VERIFIED or NOT FOUND, and change any NOT FOUND email to "contact form" or MISSING.
Step 4. Open every site yourself, then cut
Yes, all of them. In our own testing, AI tools sometimes listed old domains that now show a parking page, or marked a site as working when it didn't exist. So check by hand: does the store exist, is it open, and does it sell your kind of thing? Faire suggests the same homework: visit stores, check their websites and social pages, and look at the brands they already carry (Faire).
Then delete anything with a fit score under 3, sort best fit first, and save it in a simple tracker. That's your list.
"Fernbrook Knit Co.," an invented knitwear brand, started with 120 stores pulled from tags and old trade show notes. After writing a profile (natural-fiber knits, $60 to $180 retail, gift and lifestyle boutiques in two states, no surf shops or chains), the research prompt and a hand check left 28. Four of the original "great fits" had closed. Two emails the AI offered weren't on the stores' sites, so those became contact-form rows.
Other good places to look
- Stores that carry brands like yours. Check the stockist pages of brands you admire.
- Trade shows and markets, including online ones (Faire).
- Wholesale marketplaces, where stores can find and order from you (Faire).
- Your own customers. Ask where else they shop.
Mistakes to avoid
- Pitching a store you haven't opened in a browser. Made-up stores are the most common AI mistake.
- Guessed emails like [email protected]. If it isn't on their site, use the contact form or Instagram.
- Old info. Stores close and buyers change. Check the date of their latest post.
- Bought or scraped lists. Fewer, better-fit stores, written to by a real person, is the whole point.
Get the free Founder's Wholesale Checklist
Eight parts of selling into stores on four pages, each with one AI prompt you can copy. Plus The Sell-In, one short wholesale email every Tuesday.