Magento launched this week its Magento B2B Program, an initiative that advises manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors on how to use the company’s e-commerce platform to best run their online businesses, says Craig Peasley, head of marketing.
The eBay Enterprise company is looking to take advantage of the growing market of B2B buyers completing more of their purchasing online, Peasley says. “We found that a large percentage of our customers were already using the technology for B2B, and that there is a big, growing need from branded manufacturers, distributors and retailers to leverage the platform for B2B use,” he says.
Peasley also cites a 2014 study conducted by Forrester Research Inc. and Internet Retailer that forecasted the number of B2B buyers completing at least half of their work-related purchases online to nearly double by 2017, to 56% from 30% last year. Internet Retailer is published by Vertical Web Media LLC, which also publishes B2BecNews.
Magento is taking what it has learned from the 30% of its B2B customers already using the Magento platform to sell to other businesses, and will use that knowledge to offer direction to other B2B companies interested in selling online. Magento and such Magento-certified web site design and development firms as Alpine Consulting, Demac Media and eWave will help B2B companies implement features that Peasley says are “necessary and unique to B2B” e-commerce sites. These features include custom catalogs, negotiated or bulk pricing payment options, warehouse management, personalized web content, order management and regulatory support into their e-commerce experience. The Magento Enterprise platform also comes with built-in responsive web design. Responsive design enables an e-commerce site to automatically adapt to the size of a visitor’s smartphone or tablet screen.
The approximately 1,000 B2B customers already using the platform for e-commerce transactions include Implant Direct, a manufacturer of dental implants; SureGrip Footwear, a manufacturer of athletic shoes; and W.S. Darley, a manufacturer of military and fire equipment, Peasley says. Implant Direct, for example, relaunched its e-commerce site on the Magento Enterprise platform in 2013 with such features as product configurators and the ability to restrict access to products based on an individual buyer’s area of responsibility.
Peter Sheldon, a vice president and e-commerce technology analyst at Forrester Research, says the new Magento B2B Program is a way for Magento to step up its focus on selling to B2B companies. “Firms have been using and customizing Magento in B2B e-commerce for years,” he says, adding: “The Magento product marketing group is now formally targeting B2B as a vertical sector.” Magento is open-source software, which provides access to the core software code for making modifications. EBay Enterprise was sold last month by eBay Inc. to a group of investment firms.
Peasley says Magento caters mostly to midmarket companies with annual revenue ranging between $5 million and hundreds of millions of dollars. Deployment of Magento Enterprise can take anywhere from one to six months, depending on the complexity of the business, he adds.
The annual fee for the Magento Enterprise starts at about $18,000. 178 of the top 1000 online retailers in North America use Magento, making it the top e-commerce platform provider to the largest e-retailers, according to the 2015 Internet Retailer Top 500 and 2015 Second 500. That includes retailers that use the free Magento Community edition.
Sign up for a free subscription to B2BecNews, a weekly newsletter that covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B e-commerce industry. B2BecNews is published by Vertical Web Media LLC, which also publishes the monthly business magazine Internet Retailer. Follow Nona Tepper, associate editor for B2B e-commerce, on Twitter @ntepper90.