Nearmio
After your holiday shipping cutoff, send shoppers to your stockists
September 2026
Every brand that ships its own orders has a date in December after which the honest answer to "will this arrive in time?" is no. Most stores handle that date with a banner — "Order by the 18th for holiday delivery" — and then, once it passes, with nothing at all. The traffic keeps coming. It's some of the most motivated traffic of the year: people who need a gift in the next few days and have already decided they like your product. And the site's only offer to them is a parcel that arrives too late.
If you sell wholesale, you have a better answer. There are shops — maybe dozens, maybe hundreds — with your product on a shelf right now. For the last week before the holidays, they are your fulfilment network, and the only thing missing is a way for the shopper to find the nearest one.
The last week belongs to physical retail
A late shopper has three options: pay for express shipping and hope, buy a gift card, or walk into a shop. For a candle, a bottle of hot sauce, a ceramic mug, or a dog toy, walking into a shop wins — they leave with the gift in hand. The question is only whose product they leave with. If your site tells them which shop two miles away carries you, it's yours. If it tells them nothing, it's whatever that shop put by the till.
The sale also isn't lost to you just because it didn't go through your checkout. Your stockist sells through the stock they bought from you, and a shop that sells through in December reorders in January. Sending a shopper to a retailer's door is one of the few kinds of retail support that costs you nothing and that the retailer can actually feel.
Why this is a September job, not a December one
The catch is timing. A where-to-buy page only helps in the last week if it's right in the last week — and that's exactly when stockist lists tend to be most out of date. Retailers place their holiday orders in early autumn, so a wholesale brand picks up more new doors between September and November than at any other time of year. A stockist page last edited in the summer is missing the very shops that stocked up for the season.
Sending a shopper to a shop that doesn't carry you is worse than sending them nowhere. So the work is in two parts: get the list current before Black Friday, and make it cheap enough to refresh that you'll actually do it again in early December.
A four-step plan
- Build the map from the orders you've already shipped. If you sell through Faire, your order history is your stockist list. You can export it and import the CSV, or — in beta — connect Faire directly and skip the spreadsheet. Retailers who order from you by email or through a rep go in the same file.
- Tag each shop with what it carries. "Go to this shop" is only useful if the shop has the thing. Even a rough tag per product line — candles, diffusers, gift sets — lets a shopper filter the map to shops that stock what they came for. For anything that matters, add a line suggesting they call ahead.
- Refresh it the week after Black Friday. Reorders and last-minute new accounts land in late November. Re-running the import takes a few minutes and brings the map up to date for the stretch where it matters most.
- On cutoff day, change the message. Swap the "order by" banner for one that points somewhere: "Too late to ship? Find it at a shop near you." Link it to your where-to-buy page from the announcement bar, the cart, and any product page where you show delivery estimates. Put the same link in your last-call email.
What the shopper needs from the page
A late shopper is on their phone, often already out. The page has about ten seconds. It needs a "near me" button that uses their location, the closest shops listed with opening hours (holiday hours differ — worth a check with your bigger stockists), a phone number to confirm stock, and one-tap directions. An alphabetical list of shop names under state headings does none of that; nobody scrolls through sixteen California entries to work out which one is closest.
Doing this with Nearmio
Nearmio is a Shopify store-locator app built for brands sold through stockists. You import your retailers by CSV (or from Faire, in beta), every address is placed on the map automatically with no Google API key to set up, and the map goes on your storefront as an app block — no theme edits. Shoppers get search by city or zip, a near me button, filters by product line, hours, phone, and directions.
It's free for up to 5 locations. The Pro plan is $9.99/month flat for unlimited locations, with a 7-day free trial — long enough to build the whole map and see it live before paying anything.
Nearmio is an independent Shopify app and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Faire.