> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://sidedish.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Merchants

> The ecosystem of your marketplace

### Merchants

Merchants are the people behind the products in your marketplace. They can be a single person or a team of people.

Your company can also be a merchant in your marketplace. If you want to publish products of your own, you'll need to create a merchant profile for yourselves.

### Merchant properties

Merchants have `name` (which isn't necessarily unique) and a `hash` which is unique.

Other properties can be added and selected by you in the [Store settings page](https://app.sidedish.dev/store/settings).

Available properties:

* Business name
* Location
* Profile picture
* Cover picture
* Website link
* Support link
* Twitter link
* Instagram link
* Custom fields (tiers, badges, etc)

### Merchant profile page

Merchants can have a unique url, that is used to access their profile page. Something like [https://sidedish.store/@merchant](https://sidedish.store/@merchant)

To set a url for all merchants go to the [Store settings page](https://app.sidedish.dev/store/settings).

### Creating a Merchant

Merchants can be created in three ways:

1. In the SideDish admin dashboard
2. By using the API, from your own app.
3. By merchants themselves using the `New Merchant` embeddable component.

Once a merchant is created, it isn't yet published. You will need to publish them in the Dashboard app, or by using the API.

### Merchant teams

Merchants can have multiple people working on their team. Adding people to their team can be done from multiple methods:

1. In the SideDish admin dashboard
2. By using the API
3. By the merchants themselves, in their Team page, available from the `Merchant` embeddable component.

### Merchant possibilities

Successful marketplaces require full cooperation from the merchants. They are the ones who can create products. To better assist them with this, SideDish provides the following features:

* Self management of their profile page
* Self management of their team
* Self management of their payments
* Upload documents
* Creation of products
* Editing of products
* Responding to reviews

<Tip>
  Since we fully support every action from the API, you can have all these functionalities from your own app and your own components.
</Tip>

### Authenticating merchants

If you want to use SideDish's interface and the prebuilt components, you'll need to authenticate your merchants.

Merchants can be authenticated in two ways:

1. By you, using the API to create `End User tokens`. [See here](/api/auth#end-user-tokens)
2. By utilizing SideDish login page.