Stellantis is the company behind Jeep, Ram, Dodge, Chrysler, Fiat, Peugeot, and a dozen other nameplates. It was formed in 2021 from the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Groupe PSA, which matters for one practical reason: the supplier systems still carry French-PSA DNA, including the COFOR, the vendor identifier every registered supplier gets assigned. If you want to sell to Stellantis, the COFOR is your starting point, not your business card.
Here is how the registration actually works, what the supplier-diversity team is looking for, and the side door most small suppliers miss.
What Stellantis actually buysTwo broad categories. Direct (production) material is everything that goes into a vehicle: stampings, seats, electronics, wiring harnesses, fasteners, plastics, battery components, software. Indirect (non-production) material is everything that keeps the plants and offices running: MRO supplies, facilities services, IT, logistics, marketing, professional services, packaging.
If you make production parts, you are competing in a world of IATF 16949 quality certification, PPAP submissions, and multi-year program timelines tied to vehicle launches. That is a long, capital-intensive sale. If you sell indirect goods or services, the cycle is shorter and the bar to entry is lower, which is where most newly certified diverse suppliers find their first realistic opening.
Know which lane you are in before you register. The buyers who evaluate a logistics vendor are not the buyers who source a brake-line supplier.
How registration actually worksStellantis takes open, self-service supplier registrations. You do not need an invitation to get into the system, which separates Stellantis from automakers that only accept referrals.
You start at the Stellantis Supplier Portal (supplier.stellantis.com). On the home page there is a "register your Company" link. Completing it creates your company record and assigns your COFOR, the vendor ID that identifies you across every Stellantis system. Without a COFOR you are invisible to their buyers.
Registration alone does not make you a supplier. It makes you a candidate. Stellantis runs a Candidate Assessment Evaluation on the registration portal, and the supplier-diversity program managers provide feedback after they review your profile. Treat that profile like a pitch, not a form. Specific NAICS codes, named capabilities, real plant or service locations, quality certifications, and current customers do more than generic category checkboxes.
Get your house in order before you register. A clean, specific, well-documented profile is the difference between an assessment that moves forward and one that stalls.
The diversity-certification angleStellantis runs a real, resourced supplier-diversity program. It ranked #2 on Fair360's 2024 list of Top Companies for Supplier Fairness out of more than 2,100 companies evaluated. The program explicitly counts minority-owned, women-owned, veteran-owned, LGBTQ-owned, disability-owned, small, and historically underutilized businesses.
What gets you counted is third-party certification, not self-attestation. Stellantis recognizes the standard national certifications:
- NMSDC for minority business enterprises (MBE). If you are minority-owned, this is usually the highest-leverage certification in the auto industry. Our NMSDC certification guide walks through eligibility, the site visit, and the renewal cycle.
- WBENC for women-owned businesses (WBE).
- NVBDC for veteran-owned businesses. Stellantis participated alongside GM and Ford in NVBDC's 2014 certification testing, so the veteran credential is recognized in this supply base.
- NGLCC (LGBTQ-owned) and Disability:IN (disability-owned) round out the categories the program names.
Certify before you register, or at minimum before you expect the diversity team to engage. A certification number turns a generic supplier profile into one that maps to a spend goal the company is actively trying to hit. If you are running multiple certification applications at once, that is exactly the kind of paperwork CertifyAll is built to handle in one pass.
How to get noticed, not just listedSitting in the portal is necessary but passive. The active path is the Stellantis North America Annual Supplier Diversity MatchMaker. It puts diverse suppliers in front of Stellantis buyers, executives, and existing Tier-1 suppliers, with tabletop exhibit space to demonstrate capabilities. NMSDC lists and promotes the event, so working through your local NMSDC affiliate or WBENC council is often how you get an invitation to participate.
Stellantis also runs development programs that double as relationship channels. MentorWE is a nine-month training program for certified women-owned businesses, run with the Great Lakes Women's Business Council. The National Black Supplier Development Program, created with the National Business League in 2021, focuses on building capacity among Black-owned suppliers. These are not just feel-good programs. They are where buyers meet suppliers months before a sourcing decision.
The pattern across all of them: show up where the buyers already are. A portal profile is a database entry. A MatchMaker conversation is a relationship.
The Tier-2 side doorIf you cannot win a direct (Tier-1) contract with Stellantis, you can still sell into the Stellantis supply chain through its Tier-1 suppliers. This is the Tier-2 path, and for many small diverse firms it is the more realistic first sale.
Large automakers track the diverse spend their Tier-1 suppliers make with their own subcontractors, because that indirect spend rolls up into corporate diversity reporting. A company like Adient, Lear, Magna, or BorgWarner has its own incentive to find certified diverse Tier-2 suppliers, partly because their automaker customers ask them to report on it. The MatchMaker is built partly for this: it deliberately seats diverse suppliers next to Stellantis Tier-1 suppliers, not just Stellantis buyers.
So the play is to certify, register for your COFOR, and simultaneously pitch the Tier-1 suppliers that already hold Stellantis contracts in your category. Two doors, one set of credentials. (We have not independently confirmed a published, codified Tier-2 reporting mandate for Stellantis Tier-1s, so treat the mechanism as standard automotive practice rather than a quoted policy until you confirm it with your buyer.)
Where to startIf you are minority-, women-, veteran-, LGBTQ-, or disability-owned, the sequence is: get certified, register on the Stellantis Supplier Portal to claim your COFOR, build a specific capability profile, then chase the MatchMaker and the Tier-1 relationships. The diversity program is a real budget line, not a courtesy, and the suppliers who treat it that way are the ones who get the assessment moving.
Stellantis is one of dozens of corporate programs that take open registrations and recognize the same handful of certifications. If you want to spread your effort across several at once, browse the corporate program directory to see which buyers match what you sell, then work them in parallel.
