A distributor is a person or company that moves products from manufacturers to the stores where customers can buy them. Think of distributors as the connecting link in a chain: factories make things, distributors transport and deliver them to many different stores, and then customers shop at those stores.

When a toy company in China makes action figures, they don't ship them one by one to every toy store in America. Instead, they sell thousands of figures to a distributor, who stores them in a large warehouse and delivers them to hundreds or thousands of stores. The distributor handles all the complicated work of shipping, storing, and tracking inventory so manufacturers can focus on making products and stores can focus on selling them.

Distributors exist for almost everything: books, groceries, electronics, clothing, and even gasoline. A juice company might have one factory but work with dozens of distributors to get its products into stores across the country. Without distributors, your local bookstore would need to contact hundreds of individual publishers, and manufacturers would need massive shipping departments to reach every small shop that wants their products.

The word can also describe a mechanical part in older car engines called a distributor that sends electricity to spark plugs, sending power where it needs to go, much like how a product distributor sends goods where they're needed.