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E-commerce

B2B E-commerce

Business-to-Business E-commerce

Portrait of Robert Klimant, co-founder of Roelu Studio
Robert KlimantCo-founder

What is B2B E-commerce?

B2B ecommerce is the online sale of products or services from one business to another, typically through a dedicated portal or a customer-specific storefront. Unlike B2C, B2B ecommerce involves account-based access, negotiated pricing, volume discounts, quote requests, purchase orders, and multi-step approval workflows. Buyers might be wholesalers, retailers, distributors, or enterprise procurement teams placing repeat orders against agreed contracts and credit terms.

Why it matters

Most B2B sales still happen over email, PDF catalogues, and phone calls. That is a 1990s workflow propped up by inertia. Modern B2B buyers want the same self-serve experience they get on Amazon — log in, see their pricing, place an order, get an order confirmation, track shipment. The brands that build that experience win against legacy competitors who still take orders by fax. The trade is a more complex storefront: customer-specific catalogues, tiered pricing, credit terms, approval chains, integrations with the buyer's ERP. The reward is shorter sales cycles, lower cost-to-serve, and revenue that scales without scaling headcount.

How it works

Buyers log in to a portal that shows their negotiated pricing, their available products, and their account terms. Catalogues are customer- or segment-specific — a wholesaler sees wholesale pricing, a retailer sees retail. Orders go through approval workflows when over a threshold set by the buyer organization's finance team. Invoicing supports net-30 or net-60 terms, not just card payment. The commerce engine — Medusa.js, BigCommerce B2B, Shopify Plus B2B — integrates with the seller's ERP for inventory and accounting, and often with the buyer's procurement system via punchout or EDI. Reorder flows, saved carts, and quote requests live alongside the standard checkout.

Related terms

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