A distributorship is a company — or the legal position of a company — that has an arrangement to sell another company’s products, usually in a certain area. The maker does not sell every box itself; it gives a distributorship the right to buy in bulk and sell on to shops or customers. You hear this in business English: “They were granted the Taiwan distributorship.” It can name the firm (“a local distributorship”) or the right itself (“lose the distributorship”). It is a formal, commercial word, not home talk. Though actually, it is not simply a shop. A shop sells to you; a distributorship often sits in the middle, between the brand and many shops. It is also not automatically a franchise with a brand name over the door, though some look like that. The heart of the word is the arrangement: you are the appointed seller for those goods.