For the fiscal first quarter ended April 28, the apparel retailer posted total net revenue of $309.6 million. That compares with $303.7 million in the first quarter of 2022, a 1.9% gain. Net loss was $1.7 million, which compared with a Q1 2022 net loss of $2.4 million.

Lands’ End ecommerce

Ecommerce, which Lands’ End launched in the late 1990s and far ahead of many other apparel and mass merchandise retailers, also remained flat in the U.S. and declined overseas.

For the quarter, global Lands’ End ecommerce net revenue was $203.1 million. That’s a decrease of 7.3% from $219.1 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2022. Compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2022, U.S. ecommerce net revenue increased 1.6% to $177.7 million from $174.9 million.

Lands’ End U.S. ecommerce accounted for 57.4% of all sales compared with 57.6% in the first quarter of 2022.

Our U.S. ecommerce, which represents our largest go-to market segment, saw a sales increase of 2% from the first quarter of 2022, driven by targeted promotions within swim and adjacent product categories, interim chief financial officer Bernie McCracken told analysts on the Lands’ End Q1 earnings call.

“Our Europe ecommerce business in the quarter was down 29%, reflecting the continued lower levels of consumer demand in Europe,” McCracken said.

Lands’ End B2B sales

Lands’ End does not break out its B2B ecommerce numbers, but overall business-to-business sales in Q1 from its Outfitters unit was $74.0 million. That’s a 37.1% increase from $54.0 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2022.

“We continue to roll out our strategic initiatives and expect that the learnings from each successive quarter will enable further refinement,” said CEO Andrew McLean.

In the wake of weak ecommerce sales growth, Lands’ End is bringing in a new senior executive to change up operations. The company in April hired Stuart Hogue as Lands’ End’s senior vice president of U.S. ecommerce. Most recently, Hogue served as a senior advisor for McKinsey & Co. Prior to that, Hogue worked for 15 years at Nike. Most recently, he was vice president and general manager of Foot Locker, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“Stuart is a digitally savvy leader with more than 20 years of industry experience,” McLean told analysts. “He enjoyed a successful career at Nike and joined us from McKinsey, where he advised clients on digital, omnichannel retail, and marketing transformation initiatives.”

Lands’ End is No. 79 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers by web sales.

Do you rank in our database?

Submit your data with this quick survey and we’ll see where you fit in our next ranking update.

Sign up

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, senior vice president of B2B and Market Research, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com. Follow him on Twitter @markbrohan.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when we publish Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content.

The post The world of ecommerce is flat for Lands’ End appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Joe Cicman, senior analyst, Forrester Research

Buyers want helpful online product content and purchasing features, demands that have many of them preferring manufacturers’ websites, new research from Digital Commerce 360 and Forrester Research Inc. finds.

“Brand manufacturers win buyers with great content,” says Forrester senior analyst Joe Cicman. “Our joint research indicates the top choice for business buying in 2023 is the brand manufacturer’s own site (57%), beating-out Amazon Business at 43%. Why? Both a surprise and a delight: 85% of buyers tell us that the best source for product information is the brand manufacturer’s own site.”

The joint research project also found that 70% of B2B buyers will increase their online purchasing of goods and services in 2023.

Cicman — who will discuss at the EnvisionB2B Conference & Exhibition this month the results of the joint DC360/Forrester suryey and the intersection of online buyer demands and sellers’ ecommerce technology strategies — asserts that sellers must review the functions that address the challenges they face in serving customers, then identify the ecommerce technology platform that covers those w.

McKesson discusses B2B commerce trends

Val DuVernet, senior director of digital strategy and optimization, McKesson

Cicman will speak at EnvisionB2B in a June 21 session to analyze with DC360 the results of the joint research project and discuss digital commerce technology trends with Val DuVernet, senior director of digital strategy and optimization at medical products distributor McKesson.

B2B companies “should examine potential ecommerce solutions to identify which ones cover the specific common functions they most value,” Forrester says in the March 2023 report, “Demystifying the Technical Functions of B2B Commerce Solutions,” written by Cicman with input from other Forrester analysts.

Some of those functions, for example, can include how ecommerce technology manages customer account hierarchies, contract terms and personalized product catalogs for each customer.

Gartner’s Gene Alvarez on technology choices

Gene Alvarez, distinguished vice president and analyst covering digital commerce technology at research and advisory firm Gartner Inc., says B2B companies today have plenty options for deploying ecommerce technology based on their resources and their customers’ demands regarding the online buying experience.

Gene Alvarez, distinguished vice president and analyst, Gartner Inc.

Companies with limited IT resources can opt for software-as-a-service platforms that support customized customer-facing front ends. But businesses with more substantial resources can move up to even more customizable modular and composable MACH platforms with extensive use of microservices, APIs, cloud and headless infrastructure configurations, Alvarez says.

As competition increases in B2B ecommerce, and companies develop new and innovative ways to interact with buyers and make their customers’ jobs easier, it will be crucial for online sellers to operate commerce technology they can modify to keep up with new standards.

“As new innovation comes along, you need to” be able to bring about that new innovation because it will be table stakes within a year,” Alvarez says. “That’s where MACH brings advantages.”

Alvarez will speak on digital technology trends and strategies at EnvisionB2B. He will lead a June 20 panel and workshop on building customer loyalty.

Sign up

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact editor Paul Demery at paul@digitalcommerce360.com and follow him on Twitter @pdemery.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when new Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content is published.

The post B2B buyers prefer manufacturers’ ecommerce sites appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

B2B sellers make customer expansion and converting sales online priorities

The survey shows most B2B sellers believe they have mastered the basics of ecommerce, such as site search and product reviews. But when it comes to personalized commerce, larger companies are more satisfied with their efforts, while many smaller competitors are investing in this area. Two-thirds of B2B sellers say they are successfully driving online conversions with such widely deployed features as:

• Site search
• Promotions
• Product ratings and reviews
• Showing inventory availability

While companies of all sizes generally believe that personalization is working for them, those with more than $500 million in annual revenue report greater success in several areas. Overall, B2B sellers are seeing the greatest return from tailoring site search results, for example by showing buyers only products they are approved to buy and the prices their companies have negotiated.

But several tactics are working far better for larger versus smaller firms, probably reflecting greater investment. These include personalized site search results, customer-specific pricing and targeting promotions to specific customer segments. Smaller companies are responding by putting some personalization features on their to-do lists for 2023. That includes personalized payment and shipping options (15.8% of smaller firms plan to invest versus 3.6% of larger ones) and personalized product category pages (15.8% versus 1.2%).

More Charts & Data Stories

Check back soon for more Charts & Data Stories, like our weekly B2B infographics. We add new content regularly. 

Sign up

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, senior vice president of B2B and Market Research, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com. Follow him on Twitter @markbrohan.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when we publish Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content.

The post B2B sellers boost conversion with new ways to make purchases appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Scott Dushane, director of IT, Fairmount Tire & Rubber

“One of our biggest differentiations is when we answer the phone, it’s on the first couple of rings, every single time,” says Scott Dushane, director of IT.

But while that helps build personal relationships with customers, it’s not a scalable-enough business strategy to meet Fairmount’s goals. And those goals are ambitious — like providing an Uber Eats level of a transparent order and delivery service.

“Just like you can now go to Uber Eats, order a burrito, then know the driver’s name that’s going to pick up that burrito and then hand it to you in exactly 23 minutes, we want that same experience to happen for wholesale tires,” Dushane says.

“It’s a much less sexy industry, but the genie’s out of the bottle — we need to provide the same level of service and supply chain transparency that Uber is providing.”

Making strides in service and sustainability

Fairmount Tire & Rubber primarily serves the four-state region of Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah. It uses its home-grown self-service ecommerce site integrated with an online delivery management system to improve and expand its business. At the same time, it is drastically cutting out paper documents, increasing its sustainability and operating efficiency, Dushane says.

He says Fairmount is making significant strides in upgrading how it engages B2B customers online, matching buyers with the particular tire SKUs they need from a long list of options — such as the many tire brands, sizes, and applications like tread patterns for different types of weather — and providing transparency in deliveries, including same-day service.

Fairmount uses an online delivery management system that has streamlined and expedited the distributor’s delivery system and lets customers know through a GPS-based mobile app what tires are coming and when.

The delivery management system, from Descartes Systems Group, integrates through Google Cloud with Fairmount’s digital commerce platform and other technology systems and applications, including enterprise resource planning, product information management, customer relationship management and warehouse management.

Dushane says that, until recently, the most common call Fairmount’s agents received was “Where’s my tires?” But with the new system, Fairmount can replace those inbound customer service calls with outbound sales “rainmaker” calls often made by the same agent.

“This is real money,” he says.

No more shuffling paper for invoices

The old system had relied heavily on paper documents about customer orders and available delivery trucks, resulting in a difficult process for planning order fulfillment and delivery.

“For many years, it was a stack of papers on someone’s desk. And you would do the old shuffle and figure out how to route and how to build trucks,” Dushane says.

Fairmount now uses its integrated ERP, order management and delivery management systems to automatically coordinate how orders are delivered with the most efficient use of trucks and routes, he adds.

“It is an unbelievably difficult problem to route trucks throughout a city, like mathematically,” he says, adding, “Descartes comes up with sort of magical solutions that [we] never came up with for the last 30 years of running the same routes.”

As customer orders come into Fairmount’s B2B ecommerce login customer portal, at b2b.fairmounttire.com, the tire distributor’s financial software generates electronic invoices that the delivery management system allocates to delivery trucks based on their availability and capacity.

One advantage of the new system is replacing a system that used to require three sheets of paper for each invoice. When drivers make deliveries, they use mobile devices stored with order details and e-invoices to receive customers’ digital signatures and generate delivery confirmation notes.

“We totally eliminated paper,” Dushane says.

Reworking delivery routes for more service and sales

In addition, Fairmount speeds up deliveries by using its software to arrange multiple orders on the same truck in a way that makes them faster to unload at each customer’s destination.

And that has opened the door to more sales opportunities as well as greater efficiency, Dushane says.

“We have been able to start to run second and third routes because of Descartes … because we know when the drivers will be coming back and what the trucks can be filled up to — there’s no obfuscation,” he says.

“We have fixed costs,” he adds. “So let’s use those fixed costs to the best of our ability.”

This article is included in a special report covering B2B digital technology trends and a preview of the 2023 EnvisionB2B Conference & Exhibition.

Scott Dushane will speak during a panel and workshop on order management, fulfillment and delivery operations at the 2023 EnvisionB2B Conference & Exhibition.

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week, covering technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact editor Paul Demery at paul@digitalcommerce360.com and follow him on Twitter @pdemery.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when new Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content is published.

The post How a tire distributor drives up customer satisfaction modeling Uber appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

The $140 million raised by Austin-based 8fig will be used by the company to make upgrades to its supply chain management software platform for online sellers and for offering B2B and B2C sellers new ways to finance operations and expansion.

“8fig is providing these online sellers with the financial support and tools necessary to thrive in any economic climate,” says CEO Yaron Shapira. “The latest funding round has proven that the market has great confidence in 8fig and the important role 8fig continues to play in the ongoing growth of ecommerce.”

The latest round of investment is from Koch Disruptive Technologies with participation from existing investors Battery Ventures and others. Since 8fig’s founding in 2020, it has raised more than $195.6 million in financing. It has provided more than $500 million in financing to online sellers, the company says.

“The global macroeconomic challenges we are experiencing make it difficult for ecommerce business owners to access the resources they need to succeed,” Shapira says.

The company provides growth plans for small and medium-sized ecommerce businesses that have some sales history. The plan includes funding and financial tools for supply chain management, financial planning, and freight and logistics coordination, according to Crunchbase.com.

With the new funding, 8fig plans to implement enhanced financial management capabilities for sellers, including more banking alternatives and cash flow prediction models that will include alerts and insights based on business performance. 8fig also says it is collaborating with ecommerce marketing agencies on a financial tool to evaluate their clients’ cash flow requirements and mitigate risks by providing alerts and actionable insights.

Sign up

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, vice president of B2B and Market Research Development, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com and follow him on Twitter @markbrohan.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when we publish new Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content.

The post A supply chain applications developer and financier raises $140 million appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Digital Commerce 360: How does your organization define connected commerce and how important is this strategically for the company?

Michael Eichinger: Connected commerce for Bay Supply is all about providing our customers with the convenience of transacting business using analog or digital communications to manage credit accounts, digital and analog payments, sales taxes, and data transmissions.

Connected commerce is a vital part of digital transformation and remains ahead of customer’s future expectations of quality support and service.

DC 360: The maturity curve. How far along are you in implementing connected commerce? (Please be specific.) Where do you expect to be 12 months from now?

Michael Eichinger: We are extremely far along on the maturity curve today. We still face challenges, but today our customers transact business with our company on our online vertical marketplace, offline through emailed purchase orders or even over the phone. In all cases, our customers can utilize credit term accounts or pay by credit card. Our credit Terms program for users on our vertical marketplace provides an employer identification number (EIN) upon registration and by the time they complete adding products to their cart and checkout, they can utilize their new Net 30 Credit Terms account and are provided their limits. That is as instantaneous as it can be, and we built this in our partnership with “Balance” over the past 2-3 years. We still have much to do on the data transmission front, but our immediate challenges were not only to provide a seamless experience with our customers across various channels of communication, but to provide analog and digital methods of invoicing, collecting digital payments and still secure a process of check payments most effectively in a traditional fashion for orders placed digitally.

DC 360: What are the top three digital goals and objectives for achieving digital commerce and why these three? (Please be specific).

Michael Eichinger: I believe these three digital goals will vary by the type of organization, industry, and customer persona. For Bay, our three digital goals are:

• Transform long-term, traditional, analog relationships with our customers by providing a seamless way of engaging and transacting business from an all-analog approach to include a digital option for communications, purchasing, paying, and managing credit accounts. We believe the customer should see minimal impact in how they opt to conduct their business with our company depending on where they are in the digital transformation process as an organization. Many companies are moving to all digital payments, while others remain analog for all purchase orders and payments but communicate with us online and source plan from our online marketplace platform. Every customer is different and at a different stage of digital adoption. The challenge is to continue to engage and move ahead of the customer’s ultimate expectations because these challenges are not quickly met.
• Duplicate your analog customer experience with your digital experience. Most companies fail at capturing more than 5%-15% of their business digitally because they restrict customer options far more digitally than analog. They may not offer quantity break pricing or customer contract pricing digitally, but the customer can certainly get this flexibility offline. Digital commerce is about mirroring the customer’s analog experience as much as possible and this is not as easy as it first appears. Communications, resource tools, educational content, transaction management, RMA’s, order modifications, scalable and realistic pricing for bulk to minimize the noise of RFQ and Quote submission management. This also includes order tracking, backorders, lead times, account oversight and a variety of digital payment methods that can work concurrently with analog check submissions. The future is all digital, but this goal has no shortcut.
• Establish connectivity within your enterprise resource planning (ERP) for transparency and ability to leverage automation digitally to provide scalability and foundational resources required to communicate with your customer via data transmissions in the ways that they may prefer today. This may include punchout, EDI, API, JSON, and XML. This landscape is moving just as fast. We are attempting to change the industry landscape for the fastener industry by providing a custom digital quotation software program that will reduce the time and efforts for buyers and sellers to request and submit quotes. It includes a method of syndicating requests from buyers to the supply chain of relevant suppliers, analysis tools for quote submissions, the ability to convert a quote to a purchase order to complete a transaction or print the consideration list for internal management and analog purchase order submission.

DC 360: Connected commerce embraces new digital and cloud-based applications such as headless commerce, IoT, AI and advanced analytics. Are you implementing any or all of these?

Michael Eichinger: We are in the planning stages with one partner to utilize AI for true customer personalization related to their digital interactions with our company through capturing a few datapoints based on their activity sessions on our marketplace and engagement with educational blogs and resources that may occur in other online channels.

Since we are a marketplace, we have approximately 2,000 categories and are continuously adding new products. We are exploring AI options that will help to eliminate the degree of manual data manipulation to align products appropriately to categories within our taxonomy. These applications of AI are just beginning to emerge.

DC 360: What are your top challenges in achieving connected commerce and how are you overcoming them?

Michael Eichinger: As a marketplace, our top challenges are not what other traditional companies have. We do have the same challenge of any other business to blend the customer analog experience and expectations with the digital experience in every aspect of our engagement together and with the smallest degree of recognizable change or perceived burden by our customers.

As I pointed out, mirroring your analog world of engagement with your customers digitally is a huge undertaking, but is necessary as your customer digital requirements for data transmission continue to evolve. One cannot effectively evolve or scale realistically with connected commerce and their customers if they fail to set the necessary foundations required for their customers to engage with them digitally seamlessly. The plan will inevitably fail as technology innovates along with customer expectations.

As a marketplace, we must find ways to transmit and receive data from our sellers and our customers. We are evaluating a single partner for an assortment of requirements in lieu of addressing each requirement individually.

DC 360: How will connected commerce help you better connect with internal and external stakeholders and across which digital channels?

Michael Eichinger: The answer here is “In Every Way.” Placing a business’s purpose, service, or product aside, we are living and breathing buckets of ever-changing data points in every way. From communications to transactions to KPI collection and measurement to customer personalization, to product and transaction communications. If the digital foundations are built from the ground up to create these buckets and accumulate the data, agility, scalability and use of this information can emerge and capitalized on resourcefully to communicate with internal and external stakeholders while still serving all in a traditional analog way as the industry evolves to meet with your digital capabilities in place.

Sign up

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, senior vice president of B2B and Market Research, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com. Follow him on Twitter @markbrohan.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when we publish Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content.

The post How a marketplace connects with an anytime, anywhere online customer appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

The survey of 403 companies with annual revenue of at least $20 million and located in the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden finds that 78% of organizations have an ecommerce site or digital self-service portal.

64% of companies also plan on increasing their ecommerce investment this year while on average about 52% of all sales are digital. “The results paint a picture of a market alive not only to the immediate revenue opportunities ecommerce represents, but to a raft of broader competitive advantages which ambitious organizations can capitalize on in 2023 and beyond,” the report says.

Other findings include:

• The impact of ecommerce extends beyond transactional benefits within the purchase process, and this is reflected in the channels by which businesses receive orders. Online websites are the most popular channel for sales, with 64% of companies with 500 or more employees citing it as the source from which they receive the most orders. By comparison, 49% of businesses with less than 500 employees cited online websites as their top sales channel.
• 83% of companies consider an omnichannel approach as important for their overall sales and marketing strategy.
• 59% of respondents use their ecommerce portal to assist sales representatives.
• More than half (51%) of firms now sell via online marketplaces.
• Businesses using online marketplaces generate half of their business that way and expect those sales to increase by around 40% in the coming year.
• B2B buyers increasingly expect a consumer-grade experience from their purchase experience, including the option to use mobile devices. 72% of firms have responded to the growth in demand for browsing, researching, and buying on mobile devices by adding more tools and features.
• 59% of companies are using a product information management system (PIM) to help manage product information.

“Customer experience is the new battlefield for many B2B firms, and ecommerce – with its potential for 24/7 availability and personalization – is proving a valuable weapon in an organization’s arsenal,” the report says.

The post B2B ecommerce gains ground as a central sales channel appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Experts project business buyers will increase their online purchasing. Research and advisory firm Astute Analytica forecast a 14.1% compound annual growth rate in global B2B ecommerce from 2022 to 2027, reaching $18.8 billion. In the U.S., B2B ecommerce will grow by 10.7% annually during that period and will account for 24% of all B2B sales by 2027, up from 16% in 2021, Forrester Research says.

Given that projected growth, it’s no surprise that B2B companies would put ecommerce platform and applications at the top of their tech shopping list for 2023. That’s closely followed by digital marketing applications and customer and site analytics solutions.

Larger firms are more focused than smaller ones on payment and security investments (28.9% to 15.8%). That may reflect the greater likelihood that larger firms are launching ecommerce sites in new countries where they may need to offer popular local payment options and address new security issues. Smaller companies are prioritizing order management (32.9% to 18.1%) and technology for building their own marketplaces (18.4% to 3.6%.)

It’s a sign of the growing appeal of B2B marketplaces that several vendors have emerged offering software that enables even midsized and smaller companies to invite outside firms to sell on their ecommerce sites. It’s noteworthy that only 13% of respondents are investing in what’s known as “headless commerce,” which separates what website visitors see on a website from the back-end ecommerce systems.

That’s touted to provide additional flexibility in website design. But it adds complexity to site design and management as it requires continual data exchanges between the front-end presentation layer and back-end systems.

The headless approach may be best suited for organizations with the IT resources to ensure the smooth flow of data between systems. In our survey, 14.8% of larger companies cited headless as a priority. versus 11.8% of smaller ones.

More Charts & Data Stories

Check back soon for more Charts & Data Stories, like our weekly B2B infographics. We add new content regularly. 

Sign up

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, senior vice president of B2B and Market Research, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com. Follow him on Twitter @markbrohan.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when we publish Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content.

The post B2B sellers get their technology house in order appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Recently, LeafLink, a wholesale cannabis platform, announced it had secured $100 million in financing led by CPMG, L2 Ventures and Nosara Capital, alongside participation from existing investors.

Artie Minson, president and CEO, LeafLink

LeafLink claims to serve 50% of the U.S. wholesale cannabis industry across 30 markets. The new enables LeafLink to “support its customers’ evolving technology and operational needs through enhanced platform functionality.”

“As states across the U.S. continue to legalize cannabis, we’re looking forward to growing our partnership with the industry,” says LeafLink president and CEO Artie Minson. “Our continued goal is to help brands and retailers scale their businesses while operating safely, efficiently and in compliance.”

Connecting 8,400 marijuana merchants with brands and distributors

LeafLink, a New York B2B marketplace founded in 2016, connects about 8,400 marijuana retailers with 3,700 cannabis brands and distributors.

For sellers, the marketplace platform enables them to access a real-time inventory menu, enter orders on behalf of buyers, log sales activities, and receive and approve inbound orders. In addition, sellers can track order status, share details with customers, and track upselling and cross-selling activities and opportunities ,among other features.

For buyers, marketplace tools include order and reorder management, customer support, order-tracking. and the ability to request samples.

LeafLink says it has now raised more than $450 million in investment funds.

The company also says its marketplace platform processes more than one billion transactions annually, valued at about $4.5 billion.

Sign up

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week, covering technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, vice president of B2B and Market Research Development, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com and follow him on Twitter @markbrohan.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when new Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content is published.   

The post The color of investor money for LeafLink turns deep green appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

The marketplace, Volition, will use the newly raised investment money from Newark Venture Partners and Quiet Capital, with participation from Lachy Groom, Alan Rutledge, Julian Capital, and Humba (Susa) Ventures, to continue expand operations, the company says.

Volition B2B marketplace

Nick Pinkston, CEO, Volition

“Volition is the first marketplace for the $2 trillion industrial components industry that helps engineering and purchasing teams find and buy all of the parts they need to prototype and manufacture their designs,” says CEO and co-founder Nick Pinkston.

The industrial parts market is highly fragmented, with over 500,000 unique suppliers that can be difficult to discover, the company says.

“Prior to Volition’s arrival, there was no way to easily search across all suppliers,” the Volition B2B marketplace says. “Most suppliers are new to ecommerce. And the majority do not currently provide customers a way to search for or purchase their products online, meaning customers must search through a patchwork of options to find what they need.”

Volition says its core B2B marketplace technology directly integrates with suppliers’ databases to maintain updated information and creates automated systems that quickly search and filter parts by exact product specifications, the marketplace says.

The Volition B2B marketplace, on the web at GoVolition.com, is based in San Francisco.

Sign up

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, vice president of B2B and Market Research Development, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com and follow him on Twitter @markbrohan.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when we publish Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content.

The post A newly minted B2B marketplace raises $11 million appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.