# Suppliers

> A Supplier is a vendor you buy variants from, referenced by purchase offers.

A **Supplier** is a vendor you buy stock from. It is a lightweight reference resource - a translatable `name` and not much else - that [Purchase offers](/api/product-management/purchase-offers/) point at to record **who** a cost price comes from.

Keeping suppliers as their own resource lets you hold concurrent purchase offers from different vendors for the same [variant](/api/product-management/variants/) and compare their costs.

## The Supplier object

## Common workflows

- **Onboard a vendor.** Create a supplier with its `name`, then reference it from the [Purchase offers](/api/product-management/purchase-offers/) that record its prices.
- **Compare sourcing.** Keep a purchase offer per supplier for the same variant to track which vendor is cheapest over time.
- **Localize the name.** Read or write the translatable `name` per locale with the `X-Flowkiwi-Locale` header.

## Conventions

### Authentication and headers

All requests require an OAuth 2.0 bearer token and the organization scope header:

```
Authorization: Bearer <token>
X-Flowkiwi-Organization-Id: <organization-id>
```

For the translatable `name`, set the active locale (and optionally a fallback):

```
X-Flowkiwi-Locale: fr-FR
X-Flowkiwi-Locale-Fallback: en-US
```

### Partial updates

`PATCH` uses [JSON Merge Patch](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7396) with `Content-Type: application/merge-patch+json`.