Tenant types

There are seven tenant types. Most customers will be in exactly one category; the Hybrid, Retail, Distributor, and Data provider types exist because the powersport supply chain has real shapes that don't fit neatly into the simpler categories.

Standard

The default. A single-store retailer or webshop selling parts to consumers or B2B customers. They activate brands from the central catalog, optionally add their own proprietary parts, and run a Shopify storefront with the PowersportOS theme.

Standard tenants don't participate in the reseller stock network or surface as "find this part nearby" results on manufacturer sites. They're the simplest shape and the largest category by volume.

Manufacturer

A brand, importer, or OEM whose products flow into other tenants' storefronts. Their primary use is the central catalog: they maintain product data once, and every reseller subscribing to their brand gets the catalog populated automatically.

Manufacturer tenants typically also run their own brand-site (often Shopify) where they can drop a "Find this part at a reseller near you" widget. The widget queries opt-in stock data from reseller tenants on the network and surfaces the nearest store with inventory. Drives traffic from the manufacturer's direct site to their dealer network.

Reseller

A retailer that has chosen to opt into the reseller stock network, that is, to share their stock data with one or more manufacturers so they appear in those manufacturers' "find this part nearby" widgets.

Resellers control precision per manufacturer: some can see exact stock counts, others only see in-stock / low / out-of-stock buckets. Resellers can revoke a manufacturer's access at any time. Stock sharing is always explicit consent, never automatic.

Hybrid

Some companies both manufacture (own brand, control catalog content) and resell (operate retailer storefronts, sell other brands). Hybrid tenants get both Manufacturer and Reseller feature sets in one tenant rather than maintaining two separate accounts.

Retail

A multi-location retail chain. Different from a Standard tenant in two ways:

1. They have multiple physical locations, each with its own stock data, captured in the DealerStock table, one stock figure per (location, SKU) pair.
2. Their Shopify product pages can show per-store availability with distance-from-customer sorting, the same UX pattern enterprise giants like Clas Ohlson have, made available to mid-size powersport chains.

Retail tenants use the same central catalog as everyone else but with the per-location stock data model layered on top. They typically push stock data per location via API from their POS or ERP.

Distributor

A wholesaler or channel partner sitting between manufacturers and retailers. Distributors often hold legal or exclusive importer rights for certain brands in their region, and their primary value to PowersportOS is curating brand-content data on behalf of the brands they represent.

Distributor tenants get the full operational portal (catalog, dealers, Shopify integration) plus the Managed brands and Managed parts surfaces, which let them write to the central catalog directly for the brands they hold permission on. See Data ingest for the underlying brand-permission model.

Distributor pricing is custom enterprise tier. Onboarding usually involves white-label or co-branded portal conversations and a per-brand catalog audit.

Data provider (free)

A brand owner, content provider, or anyone who has high-quality product data but doesn't run a PowersportOS-powered storefront themselves. The gratis tier of the platform: the tenant exists to curate central catalog data for the brands they own, and nothing else.

What Data provider tenants see in the portal: Dashboard, Brands (managed), Parts (managed), Import (CSV upload), Content (publisher for Channel Communications), Settings, Help. Hidden: My Catalog, Vehicles, Dealers, Shopify integration. Pure data curation plus the ability to publish blog posts, product releases, operational alerts, and safety recalls to subscribed retailers through Channel Communications.

Tenants flip cleanly between Data provider and the paid tiers in both directions. A Data provider that decides to start running its own storefront can request an upgrade to Manufacturer (or Distributor) from inside the portal; admin flips the type and their brand permissions and curated data follow them through unchanged. A paid tenant that wants to stop running a storefront but keep maintaining their data can be downgraded back to Data provider.

How tenant type affects the UI

The tenant type drives what the customer sees in their portal:

Standard

Catalog, vehicles, dealers (single-store), Shopify integration, stock-feed API.

Manufacturer

Standard features + brand-page management, reseller stock-network view, opt-in stock-share approvals, Managed brands / Managed parts surfaces for brands the tenant holds permission on.

Reseller

Standard features + Stock Sharing portal section to opt into manufacturer networks.

Hybrid

Both Manufacturer and Reseller features in one tenant.

Retail

Standard features + 'Locations' (instead of 'Dealers') in sidebar, per-location stock UI, location-aware Shopify widget.

Distributor

Standard features + Managed brands / Managed parts (curate central catalog for the brands they represent in a region). Distributor-specific aggregated views planned.

Data provider

Stripped-down sidebar: Dashboard, Brands, Parts, Import, Settings, Help. No storefront surfaces, no consumer-side features.

Changing tenant type

Tenant type is set when the tenant is created by an admin. It can be changed later if the customer's business shape evolves (a Standard tenant who decides to start sharing stock with manufacturers might be upgraded to Reseller). Type changes don't migrate data, they only unlock or hide UI features.

See Brand subscriptions for how Manufacturer-tier catalogs become available to Standard, Reseller, and Hybrid tenants.