Line Card

A distributor holds agreements with manufacturers permitting it to sell their products, usually within a defined territory and sometimes within a defined market segment. The line card is the roster of those relationships.

Authorisation carries obligations in both directions. The manufacturer supports the distributor with pricing, training, and warranty backing; the distributor commits to stocking, technical support, and territory. That is why an authorised distributor and a reseller are not the same thing, and why buyers under warranty or quality requirements care which they are dealing with.

Grey market product is genuine goods sold outside the authorised channel. It is legal in most cases, and it typically arrives without manufacturer warranty support, which is the practical reason the distinction appears on a line card at all.

For search, the line card is the demand map. Buyers search brand plus part number far more than they search product categories, and each brand on the card is a set of queries the distributor is eligible to answer. A line card published as a wall of logos captures none of it.

Each brand deserves a page rather than a row. A page per brand carrying the authorised statement, the product ranges stocked, the territory, and the support offered is matchable by a buyer searching that brand, and a logo grid is not.

The same reasoning extends to substitution demand. Where a buyer holds a number from a brand the distributor does not carry, a cross-reference to a carried equivalent is the only route to that query.

See industrial SEO for how distributor demand differs from manufacturer demand, and cross-reference for capturing numbers the line card does not include.