But a new survey shows that many small businesses face obstacles on the path to achieving sustainability. Meanwhile, another research report shows that left unchanged, the ongoing environmental impact from last-mile ecommerce deliveries will be harmful.

Sustainable ecommerce fulfillment comes at a cost many won’t pay

Delivery and logistics services provider DHL conducted a survey of 2,500 small and medium-sized businesses. It finds that 95% of companies say sustainability is important to their business. And almost half (48%) believe it’s extremely important. But when asked about the biggest challenge to achieving sustainable goals, 42% said the overall investment is the main obstacle. 11% said they had no clue where to start.

Sustainability is important to almost every respondent, DHL says. But “nearly half (47%) are willing to invest only 1%-3% of their operating budget into sustainability practices,” according to the DHL survey. “And 26% are not willing to invest anything” into sustainable ecommerce fulfillment.

If left unchanged, the environmental impact of the rising number of ecommerce deliveries globally will also cause more air pollution and human health issues.

A new report by Clean Mobility Collective and Stand.earth Research Group claims ecommerce and the associated emissions from last-mile delivery will continue growing exponentially. The report predicts global annual parcel volume could increase from over 315 billion parcels in 2022 to up to 800 billion parcels a year in 2030.

Without any greener changes to how these parcels are packaged and delivered, global ecommerce deliveries will emit up to 160 megatons of carbon dioxide per year by 2030, according to the report. That’s equivalent to yearly CO2 emissions of up to 44 coal plants.

“Approximately 1 billion trees would need to be planted and allowed to grow for 10 years to sequester the emissions of a single year of current last-mile parcel deliveries,” the report says.

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Emily Newton

Many new ChatGPT supply chain applications are emerging as generative AI becomes more advanced. So how can industry professionals utilize this technology effectively? They can use ChatGPT in several critical ways, primarily communication and automation.

1. Supply Chain Customer Service

Customer service is one of the most promising applications for ChatGPT in the supply chain. The natural language processing capabilities of ChatGPT are among the most advanced ever developed for popular use. This makes it an ideal tool for navigating the complex communication required in customer service tasks.

Any developer can integrate ChatGPT into their apps today using OpenAI’s official API for the algorithm. ChatGPT’s language processing skills can be applied to any customer-facing application in the supply chain, whether B2B or B2C. For example, a supplier could create a ChatGPT app for its manufacturing customers to track shipments of materials and resources.

2. Translation and International Relations

Succeeding in today’s supply chain requires working closely with partners worldwide. Unfortunately, language barriers make this challenging, potentially hindering organization and efficiency. Luckily, translation is a great way to use ChatGPT in the supply chain.

Research shows that users don’t need to specify the source language of a text passage for ChatGPT to translate it successfully. The algorithm can autonomously detect the source language and translate it in seconds.

ChatGPT’s performance is also on par or better than most digital translation tools available today. The fact that it can process natural language, including advanced technical terminology, gives it a major advantage over competitors. Its accessibility makes it ideal for supply chain applications, which rely on quick turnaround times and clear communication.

Using ChatGPT for translation can strengthen collaboration with international supply chain partners, improving efficiency and organization for everyone involved.

3. Automating Business Tasks

Businesses can use ChatGPT in the supply chain to automate various everyday tasks. For example, it can summarize a sales report, extract the highlights from a spreadsheet or draft an email. These tasks might seem small, but they help supply chain professionals work more efficiently.

ChatGPT can even be helpful for complex logistics tasks. AI is already making advances in logistics. For example, algorithms can automate order processing and help managers identify important insights in their data. This could include tasks like analyzing a list of suppliers to find those with the best rates or assessing various packaging options for the most cost-effective solution.

ChatGPT takes existing applications for AI in robotic process automation a step further. Advanced natural language processing helps it handle more complex content and user requests. Even integrating it into a larger automated system could improve performance.

4. Personalized Employee Training

ChatGPT is a great tool for improving employee training. This is especially helpful today since many supply chain businesses are adapting to new technologies and grappling with labor shortages. Surveys show 57% of supply chain leaders report hiring and retaining employees as their top challenge. Additionally, 41% have issues upskilling or reskilling existing workers.

Supply chain businesses can help alleviate these challenges by integrating ChatGPT into their training programs. It can serve as a multipurpose assistant for trainees by answering questions, explaining complex topics, and creating practice tests and flashcards. Employees can use ChatGPT to get a personalized training experience catered to their needs and learning styles.

Some trainees might quickly grasp a new technology, while others will want more time to explore definitions, technical terminology and other background information. ChatGPT can serve various training approaches, making it a versatile tool for providing more efficient employee training.

5. Data Analysis and Visualization

Data analysis and visualization is a lesser-known application for ChatGPT in the supply chain. Most people think of it as a language-specific AI, but it can also process numerical data.

Rapid and accessible data analysis tools are vital today. Data-driven insights and decisions are a cornerstone of Industry 4.0, which is rapidly reshaping the supply chain. ChatGPT makes basic AI analytics quick and straightforward. Anyone can paste a set of unstructured information into ChatGPT and ask it to summarize or organize it into a table.

Automating this task allows supply chain employees to have a more efficient workflow and leverage data more easily. ChatGPT can’t do complex data analytics yet, but it can handle many basic processes that are helpful for quickly getting an overview of a data set.

6. Idea Generation

Idea generation is a unique application for ChatGPT in the supply chain. Businesses need creative solutions to new challenges as things become more complex. Generative AI platforms like ChatGPT can be surprisingly helpful in the brainstorming process.

An AI might pinpoint unconventional solutions or ideas a human would not have considered. ChatGPT’s suggestions may not always be usable or feasible, but they provide a unique perspective that can spark creativity among team members.

Potential Drawbacks of ChatGPT

ChatGPT may be a powerful tool for certain applications, but it isn’t perfect. Business leaders should know about the drawbacks and challenges of adopting ChatGPT.

For example, ChatGPT has been known to give users inaccurate or completely made-up information. The AI’s language processing skills allow it to convey this false data convincingly, making it challenging to detect accuracy at a glance. Some groups, such as the coding help site Stack Overflow, are even banning ChatGPT due to the spread of misinformation.

This broadcast ofmisinformation is a huge problem in applications where users may be poorly equipped to verify that ChatGPT’s generated text is accurate. For example, using the AI for translating could lead to confusion if ChatGPT misunderstands the input or output language. Similarly, a new employee using ChatGPT for job training might learn incorrect information due to answer errors.

These issues may improve with time. The latest version of ChatGPT, GPT-4, is reportedly 40% more likely to give factual data, according to developer OpenAI. However, it will likely take years for ChatGPT to become a reliable source of information. Even then, there is always a chance the AI could “hallucinate” incorrect conclusions from the given data. ChatGPT’s output should always be fact-checked.

Adopting ChatGPT in the Supply Chain

There are many ways to use ChatGPT in the supply chain today, ranging from translation to employee training to logistics automation. Businesses can improve efficiency and productivity by integrating it into their workflows. OpenAI offers an API any developer can use to build ChatGPT into their app or website. In the years ahead, more supply chain applications will likely emerge as the technology advances.

About the author:

Emily Newton is an industrial writer reporting on how technology disrupts industrial sectors. She’s also the editor-in-chief of Revolutionized, covering innovations in industry, construction, and more.

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The firm is in the early stages of consideration. The IPO’s size has also yet to be determined, according to people familiar with the matter. The business group is in talks with banks that could potentially help prepare for the IPO next year, said one of the people. The person asked not to be named as the matter is private.

The unit, which competes with rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. in markets outside China, is one of six parts that Alibaba is splitting into. Valuations for the international business units vary: Morgan Stanley in March priced “international retail” units including Lazada and Trendyol at roughly $29 billion. Meanwhile, a CICC analyst report from the same month valued the firm’s international division at about $39 billion. In recent quarters, however, growth has been volatile in the face of global recessionary fears.

If it goes ahead, the Alibaba unit would join a number of high-profile Chinese firms including fast-fashion leader Shein seeking to tap American capital even as tensions rise between the world’s two largest economies. A listing in the U.S. could help the business — formally Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group, or IDCG — attract global investors wary of putting money directly into China.

Alibaba owns Taobao, No. 1 in the Digital Commerce 360 database of Global Online Marketplaces. The database ranks marketplaces by total value, or gross merchandise value of sales. Alibaba also owns Tmall (No. 2).

Amazon is No. 3 in the Global Online Marketplace Database. It’s also No. 1 in the 2022 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000 database. The Top 1000 ranks North American web merchants by sales.

Shein is No. 36 in the Digital Commerce 360 2022 Asia Database, which ranks Asia-based retailers by their online sales.

Alibaba empire considers IPOs

Alibaba in March unveiled plans to break up its empire into units such as ecommerce, logistics and the cloud, with each business potentially exploring fundraising and an IPO at an appropriate time. The company will consider gradually giving up control of some of the businesses, CEO Daniel Zhang said at the time, but declined to specify a timeline for any Alibaba IPOs.

IDCG includes:

• Southeast Asian online mall Lazada
• AliExpress, popular in Russia, Latin America and parts of Europe
• Trendyol in Turkey
• Daraz in South Asia
• Business-to-business marketplace Alibaba.com

In the final three months of 2022, the combined orders of Lazada, AliExpress, Trendyol and Daraz grew 3% from a year earlier, led by Trendyol. The international unit accounted for roughly $9.5 billion or 7% of Alibaba’s revenue in the last fiscal year and is headed by Jiang Fan, the former president of Alibaba’s domestic online retail businesses Taobao and Tmall.

Other parts of Alibaba’s empire have already begun moving ahead with spinoffs. Cainiao Network Technology Co., the logistics arm of Alibaba, as well as Freshippo, its grocery chain, have started preparations with banks for IPOs in Hong Kong.

Deliberations around an IPO are very preliminary and the situation may change, the people said. IDCG said in response to queries from Bloomberg that currently, there is no IPO plan.

Alibaba has in the past explored splitting off Lazada. The unit, bought in stages from Rocket Internet SE, is considered one of the Chinese firm’s most high-profile international brands. It competes with Amazon and Sea Ltd.’s Shopee in Southeast Asian markets such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

In 2022, Alibaba discussed raising at least $1 billion for Lazada before calling off negotiations with potential investors when talks bogged down over its valuation. It had aimed to secure the funding as a precursor to a spinoff. Alibaba has since mothballed the fundraising and injected additional funds into the company instead.

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Marcel Fairbairn, CEO, GearSource.com

“I would say I wasn’t brought up as a tech founder, I was brought up as a pretty normal, boot-strapping business guy,” says chief executive Marcel Fairbairn, who launched the business in 2002.

That approach has worked well for GearSource, which gets 70% of its orders through online searches and the remaining 30% through live customer service. Relying mostly on email and word of mouth to build business, revenue growth averaged 5% to 7% annually without acquisitions, says Fairbairn, who won’t reveal actual numbers.

“Everything we’ve done is organic,” he says. “We’ve been profitable almost every year.” The only exceptions were in 2008 in the wake of the economic crash and more recently in the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Customers range from the Super Bowl to Google and Apple

GearSource provides all manner of lighting, audio, video, staging and rigging, and related equipment to vendors servicing live entertainment venues. Ultimate users have included touring bands and mega-events such as Super Bowl half-time shows, and occasionally such large companies as Google and Apple.

More typical purchasers are companies working with nightclubs, other smaller entertainment venues, and wedding-reception halls. In one notable instance of GearSource working in what Fairbairn calls “very high-touch mode,” the country-music star Morgan Wallen needed 100 rare lighting fixtures ASAP. GearSource found them in Singapore and got them delivered to Nashville in six weeks — a quick turnaround given the logistics involved.

GearSource works both ways, providing vendors with the equipment they want and as a market for disposing of equipment no longer needed by the original buyer. In all, GearSource claims 40,000 users, including 5,000 to 6,000 active sellers offering 933 brands and between 30,000 and 60,000 products, according to Fairbairn.

“I would venture a guess that about 98% of our business is B2B,” he says.

GearSource focusing on fast growth

GearSource’s parent company, GearSource Holdings LLC, is based in Miami, but its 17 employees are fully remote. Most are in the United States, with some in Canada, Europe, and Asia.

Now GearSource aims to grow revenue by 10 to 20 times over current levels in three to five years, Fairbairn says. To do that, it’s going to ramp up search and email marketing, employ some unspecified “in-person branding opportunities,” and possibly return to trade shows, which it used in the past but hasn’t recently.

The company shifted into a higher gear recently after  a larger marketplace expressed interest in acquiring it. No deal materialized as GearSource’s would-be acquirer itself became acquisition bait. But the suitor’s interest prompted Fairbairn and his team to take a close look at their operations and business model. They soon saw untapped growth potential.

The platform clearly needed improvements. GearSource had used an in-house platform for 15 years, until 2020, when it was replaced by one developed by a third-party vendor augmented by various plug-ins and custom coding. But while the new platform had some strengths, order documentation sometimes took 30 to 40 seconds to pull up, and it had difficulty handling complex orders,  Fairbairn says.

“We were on a Frankenstein platform,” he says.

Managing a complicated marketplace

There’s no lack of complex orders on GearSource. The marketplace operates in 100 countries, thus “we’re a very complicated marketplace,” says Fairbairn. “Sixty to 70% of our transactions involve more than one currency,” he says, adding that all settle in U.S. dollars. The average transaction is $18,000. The company also has to track taxes and logistical data.

Enter New York City-based Nautical Commerce Inc., a multi-vendor marketplace platform founded in 2020. CEO and founder Ryan Lee had done stints at Apple Inc., where he worked on the Apple Pay payments service, and at Visa Inc. in new products and business development. GearSource decided to take a chance, signing on with the newbie last May and going live on Nautical’s platform in November.

So far, so good

“Speed is one of them,” he says when asked about Nautical Commerce’s advantages. Other improvements include better dashboards and reconciliation processes. “The information is more accurate, the dashboards are very clean and simple,” he says. The platform also gives GearSource customers the ability to create so-called micro-marketplaces for their own customers within the GearSource site, he says.

GearSource accepts credit cards through payment processor Stripe Inc., but most of its transactions are wire transfers processed through Nautical Commerce. GearSource charges fees to sellers based on order size and frequency.

Next up, within a couple of months, is the planned launch of a freight-brokerage subsidiary dubbed GearMoves to handle customers’ transportation and logistics needs throughout GearSource’s global footprint. Buyers will continue to be able to use sellers’ shippers or third-party shippers, but GearMoves will provide another option, says Fairbairn. Also in the works, though Fairbairn isn’t ready to give details, is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering.

All of this is part of a drive to keep his online market a go-to place for equipment buyers and sellers. “The show must go on is the overriding theme in our industry,” Fairbairn says.

B2B Ecommerce Handbook

This article is part of special report, B2B Ecommerce Handbook: Formulas for Digital Growth, which is available at no cost from Digital Commerce 360.

Jim Daly is a Mount Prospect, Illinois-based freelance journalist covering business and technology.

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Alexandre Gagnon, vice president, Amazon Business

From 2020 to 2022, Amazon Business grew at a compound annual rate of 25%, according to Alexandre Gagnon, vice president of Amazon Business Worldwide.

To expand on that growth, Gagnon says the marketplace plans to enlarge sales of office supplies. The product category grew in recent years as the pandemic led companies to more purchasing online.

Gagnon, the top executive at Amazon Business, made his comments in an interview published today by the Reuters news service and confirmed by an Amazon Business spokeswoman.

Enhancing logistics to support B2B sales

Gagnon said Amazon Business is improving logistics operations in Europe to make it more attractive for corporate-account customers to make bulk purchases of supplies ranging from desks and IT equipment to paper and printer ink. That provides Amazon the opportunity to reap higher margins compared with small-order retail consumer sales.

“Because businesses buy in larger quantities, the fulfillment economics are more advantageous,” Gagnon told Reuters.

Amazon Business entered the European market when it opened for business in Germany in 2016, followed by Great Britain in 2017. It also operates in France, Italy and Spain. The ecommerce company deals with such corporate clients as:

• Electrical equipment manufacturer ABB
• Renewable energy technology company Siemens Gamesa
• Energy technology engineering firm Centrica Business Solutions

When asked if Amazon Business intends to enter additional markets in Europe, the spokeswoman said the company “can’t comment on future plans.”

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Amazon’s total sales include its own product sales, sales from its marketplace, as well as marketplace seller fees, advertising fees and revenue from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Amazon reported net income of $3.2 billon in the first quarter, a dramatic swing from the $3.8 billion loss a year earlier. Ecommerce sales dropped 0.06% year over year to $51.093 billion in Q1.

Amazon revenue breakdown

Amazon’s results suggest the company’s efforts to reduce costs are starting to bear fruit. Operating expenses increased 8.7% in the quarter, the slowest pace in at least a decade. The company’s North America segment was profitable on an operating basis for the first time since late 2021.

Amazon Web Services generated $21.4 billion in sales, a 16% rise from a year earlier and higher than the $21.2 billion analysts had expected. The cloud-computing division is the company’s largest source of income. Despite AWS’  better-than-expected Q1 performance, Amazon said it began laying off employees in the AWS operation amid slowing sales growth in its most profitable division.

That 16% rise from Q1 2022 is the slowest growth rate reported since Amazon began breaking out the segment and the fifth consecutive quarter in which growth slowed year-over-year.

Earlier this year, chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky warned that AWS growth would slow in 2023.

Advertising sales rose more than 21% to $9.51 billion in the quarter. Revenue from third-party seller services — which include commissions, shipping services and other fees that Amazon collects from sellers on its marketplace — jumped 17.7% to $29.8 billion in Q1.

“Amazon did what it needed to do in Q1 by reversing — or at least stalling — its most troublesome declining growth trends,” said Andrew Lipsman, an analyst at Insider Intelligence, told Bloomberg News. “Amazon’s stronger-than-expected performance for its key profit centers of AWS and advertising indicate that the enterprise and the digital ad sectors may be turning the corner.”

Amazon is No. 1 in the 2022 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000 database. The Top 1000 ranks North American web merchants by sales. It is No. 3 in the Digital Commerce 360 Online Marketplaces database, which ranks the 100 largest global marketplaces.

Amazon announces BNPL option

Several hours before releasing its earnings, Amazon announced a new buy-now-pay-later option called Citi Flex Pay on Amazon Pay. Under the program, eligible Citi credit card members can pay over time with Citi Flex Pay when using Amazon Pay during checkout at participating online retail sites. The deal with Amazon marks the first time Citi credit card members can use Citi Flex Pay through a digital wallet.

Amazon already offers BNPL through Affirm. Amazon also accepts Apple Pay, and in March Apple announced a BNPL plan of its own.

Operational changes at Amazon

Amazon has made several moves in recent months to cut its operating costs, most notably by laying off thousands of workers from its ecommerce unit. In early January, CEO Andy Jassy said planned job reductions totaled 18,000 workers. That’s a full 1% of Amazon’s workforce — and well above earlier expectations that Amazon would slash 10,000 jobs.

The Seattle-based company employed almost 1.47 million people as of March 31, a decrease of 10% from the period a year earlier and down from more than 1.54 million workers three months earlier.

Second-quarter guidance on Amazon revenue

Seattle-based Amazon said it expects sales in the current quarter to reach between $127 billion and $133 billion, keeping in line with analysts’ forecasts.

Other news from the first quarter

On April 26, news site The Verge reported Amazon had decided to close its Halo division, which sold fitness- and sleep-tracking devices. Amazon had stopped selling its three Halo products and plans to lay off portions of the Halo team, the news site said.

“We have made the difficult decision to wind down the Halo program, which will result in role reductions,” Melissa Cha, Amazon’s VP of smart home and health, told staffers in an email The Verge obtained.

Some analysts said Amazon has more work to do. “We keep waiting for profit and cash flow to turn here,” Stefan Slowinski, an analyst at BNP Paribas Exane, told Bloomberg. “With all of the headlines on restructuring and closure of businesses, we’re really not getting that coming through in the numbers.”

Amazon earnings

For the fiscal first quarter ended March 31, Amazon reported:

• Amazon revenue from third-party seller services of $29.8 billion. That’s 17.7% increase from the comparable quarter of 2022.
• $9.5 billion in revenue from advertising services, a 21% jump from a year earlier
• Operating cash flow of $54.3 billion for the trailing twelve months, an increase of 38% from the $39.3 billion for the trailing twelve months ended March 31, 2022.

Percentage changes may not align exactly with dollar figures due to rounding. Check back for more earnings reports.

Bloomberg News contributed to this report.

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Amazon ranks No. 1 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest online retailers in North America by web sales. It also ranks No. 3 in the ranking of top online marketplaces.

Fraud remains a major problem

Amazon acknowledges the serious nature of the counterfeit problem on the platform. It spent $1.2 billion and employed 15,000 people to fight fraud on the marketplace in 2022, per the report. Counterfeit products are a “huge problem,” according to Robert Freund, a lawyer who works on ecommerce and social media marketing cases.

Counterfeiters aren’t new to Amazon. In 2016, Birkenstock USA CEO David Kahan said in a letter the footwear company would no longer list its products on Amazon because it was an “environment where we experience unacceptable business practices, which we believe jeopardize our brand.”

In 2019, Nike also stopped listing products directly on Amazon, a decision in part reportedly due to struggles with fake products. Even Amazon’s own products are at risk of fakes.

For brands that rely on Amazon sales, it can be difficult and expensive to “play whack-a-mole in the courts against counterfeits,” Freund said. Some companies, like Disney and Nintendo, have a “war chest” for these legal battles, but many don’t. 

The swaths of knockoffs are making shopping unpleasant for some consumers, some of whom note a decline in quality. In 2020, The New York Times’ Wirecutter dubbed our time “the era of fake products.” A 2022 study from consulting firm Brooks Bell of more than 1,000 Amazon shoppers found that about one-third reported receiving items late or receiving a low-quality product at least monthly. Some consumers may be worried about counterfeit goods on other platforms, too. A March 2023 survey of 1,053 consumers from Digital Commerce 360 and Bizrate found that 12% of beauty buyers don’t shop online because of worries that they might receive counterfeit products.

Reasons to be optimistic

The state of counterfeit products on Amazon seems to be improving, Freund says. It’s encouraging that Amazon has a clear investment in making the marketplace usable for consumers.

“I think that part of the reason they’re [Amazon] so interested in addressing the issue and at least appearing like they’re doing everything they can do, in addition to restoring goodwill with sellers, is good publicity.” They also face potential liability themselves for allowing counterfeits on their platform, Freund says.

The report from Amazon also shows a decline in counterfeit attempts in 2022 compared to the previous year. According to Amazon, there were 800,000 attempts by bad actors to create seller accounts in 2022. That’s down from 2.5 million in 2021, and 6 million in 2020, an 87% decrease over the two year period.

Counterfeit products will probably always be an issue

Despite Amazon’s reports of fewer counterfeit reports, the problem is definitely not going away. 

“It’s hard to imagine setting up some kind of framework where you just completely eliminate the business of counterfeiting,” Freund said, pointing to the massive scope of Amazon.

In 2022, Amazon said its Counterfeit Crimes Unit pursued more than 1,300 counterfeiting criminals in the U.S., U.K., EU, and China, and disposed of more than 6 million counterfeit products. While that’s progress, Freund says it also shows the difficulty of wiping out counterfeits completely.

Selling counterfeit products is “so easy to do, especially if you’re located in a country like China,” Freund said, which is hard to prosecute from the U.S. 

China is responsible for 75% of pirated and counterfeit goods seized by the U.S., according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative 2022 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy. Counterfeits from the Chenghai district of Shantou are particularly hard to stop, according to the report, because of “close relations businesses have with local administrative and criminal law enforcement authorities.”

“Right holders describe local officials as unhelpful or unwilling to pursue investigations recommended by either firms or enforcement officials from other cities,” limiting what U.S.-based retailers and marketplaces can do.

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By 2027, the gross merchandise volume generated on Indian B2b marketplaces and ecommerce sites is projected to reach $125 billion from $20 billion in 2022, says a new B2B Marketplaces report from Avendus Capital.

“Indian B2B trade, one of the largest and fastest-growing B2B markets globally,” the report says.

Indian B2B marketplaces

India’s B2B marketplace is also attracting lots of investment capital, the report says. There already are more than 100 marketplace companies with market capitalization of around $1 billion.

Some of the biggest companies raising the most funds include Reliance Industries Ltd., an Indian multinational conglomerate, headquartered in Mumbai. Its businesses include energy, petrochemicals, natural gas, retail, telecommunications, mass media, and textiles. To date the company has a market capitalization of $193 billion, says Avendus.

Overall, India’s emerging B2B market sector is valued at about $900 billion, says Avendus.

“We expect active participation of private growth investors and 6-7 IPOs,” Avendus says. “There is a huge opportunity to create multi-billion-dollar outcomes across categories given no large sophisticated traditional incumbents or horizontal ecosystems in India unlike U.S. and China.”

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The furniture retailer says the money will go toward opening new stores and creating new fulfillment networks. It marks the largest ever U.S. investment from Ikea, and the company’s largest investment in a single country.

Ikea ranks No. 3 in the Europe Database, Digital Commerce 360’s rankings of the largest online retailers in the region.

Ikea plans a variety of store formats

The retailer says it will open eight new stores in the next three years, along with nine locations of its “plan and order” format. These locations are smaller than the retailer’s iconic warehouse, dedicated exclusively to kitchen, living room, and bedroom furniture. Customers treat the smaller stores like showrooms and order pieces, but nothing is actually available to purchase in-store and take home immediately.

The furniture retailer says it will also open 900 pickup locations in the U.S. in the next three years, some of which will be attached to larger stores. Ikea plans to hire 2,000 additional U.S. workers to staff these locations. The furniture company did not specify where these new locations would be in the U.S.

“It is in all the states across the U.S. where we see opportunities, but I would say in particular the South, where we see big demand that we have not so far been able to respond to,” head of Ikea Retail Tolga Öncü, told Reuters.

As of April 2023, Ikea has 51 U.S. stores. In 2022, the retailer opened 15 pickup locations and two plan and order stores. Ikea also has San Francisco and Arlington, Virginia locations planned for summer 2023.

The U.S. is a major growth opportunity

Ikea expects the U.S. to surpass Germany as its largest sales market in the near future, Öncü, told the Financial Times.

“The U.S. is one of our most important markets, and we see endless opportunities to grow there and get closer to the many Americans with affordable products and services,” Öncü said in a press release. 

Ikea’s U.S. sales for fiscal 2022 reached $5.9 billion, according to the company’s annual report. This was equal to fiscal 2021 U.S. sales, but ecommerce sales were up nearly 19% in 2022.

The retailer says these new locations will make its budget furniture accessible to more American shoppers. ” Our priority is to become more accessible, while staying as affordable as possible for the many people, which is especially important given the increasing costs of living.” CEO & Chief Sustainability Officer at Ikea US Javier Quiñones said in a statement.

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Rafa Oliveira, president of international markets, The Kraft Heinz Co.

The Kraft Heinz Co. will start out with sales to merchants in Mexico, Colombia and Peru, followed by expansion into Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Panama and other Latin American countries in an effort to “unlock 1 million potential new points of sale across LATAM,” Kraft Heinz and BEES said in a combined press release today.

Kraft Heinz expects its business through BEES to help grow its emerging markets strategy.

Tying into AB InBev’s distribution network

Rafa Oliveira, Kraft Heinz executive vice president and president of international markets, says the big CPG company expects BEES to be a “game-changer” in its efforts to expand globally. In the press release, he notes that selling on the BEES marketplace lets Kraft Heinz benefit from AB InBev’s distribution network, “particularly in countries where we have huge potential to grow, while also allowing us to customize our approach on a market-by-market basis serving the needs of regional retailers.”

Anheuser-Busch InBev developed BEES as an online B2B platform in 2019 to let retailers order from among AB InBev’s hundreds of brands, including global beer brands Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois and many regional and local market brands.

But BEES recently opened its online platform to let other consumer packaged goods companies list their products within the BEES marketplace. BEES says it currently operates in 20 countries, including:

• Canada
• The United Kingdom
• China
• South Korea
• Several countries in Africa and Latin America

Overall, it notes that it has 3.1 million active monthly users and has processed more than $32 billion in gross merchandise sales.

BEES drives up ecommerce share of AB InBev’s revenue

Nick Caton, chief B2B officer, BEES

AB InBev reported $57.8 billion in revenue last year. It said the digital BEES platform accounted for “approximately 63% of our revenues.”

Buyers on BEES can:

• Browse for products
• Place orders
• Earn rewards in applicable markets
• Arrange deliveries
• Manage invoices
• Access market data for supply and demand insights

Nick Caton, chief B2B officer at BEES, says adding CPG companies like Kraft Heinze to the BEES marketplace complements BEES’ commitment to “accelerating digital transformation” and helping local retailers thrive in their markets.

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