B2B E-Commerce Portals Explained

If you want to grow your wholesale channel, consider adopting an online ecommerce portal. This guide will help you understand the key functions of B2B portals that could be most beneficial to your business and which platform might be best to help you achieve your goals.

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Brief Summary 

Research from the International Trade Administration predicts that the global B2B ecommerce market will exceed $36 trillion in GMV by 2026. To capitalize on this growing economy and drive business growth, it’s essential to invest in a B2B ecommerce portal. 

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The smartest brands and retailers have already adopted portals to help make ordering, managing and tracking their wholesale business more streamlined. In fact, online platforms have quickly established themselves as an indispensable tool in the wholesale industry. Our latest Market Survey revealed that 97% of brands are leveraging virtual selling for at least a portion of their wholesale appointments, making it clear that online portals have become a necessary component of wholesale fashion selling.   

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What Is a B2B Wholesale E-commerce Portal?

A B2B wholesale ecommerce portal is an online platform that facilitates wholesale transactions between brands and retailers. This digital space is usually comprised of software and innovative technologies that help to enable the placing and management of wholesale orders. 

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What Are the Main Functions of a B2B E-commerce Portal? 

Almost all ecommerce portals allow buyers to easily browse digital catalogs from brands and access hundreds of linesheets in an instant. In return, retailers can use an ecommerce portal to discover and connect with new brands, building their business network. 

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B2B wholesale platforms make order placement easier by using familiar ecommerce functionalities like adding to cart and checking out. They give users access to real-time inventory updates, reducing human error and providing an accurate representation of current wholesale stock.

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How Do Ecommerce Portals Benefit Brands?

Many brands choose to adopt an ecommerce portal as it allows them the best chance at securing new business. By joining a platform, they gain access to a wide range of retailers of different sizes and in various locations. Online portals also enable seamless communication and an improved working relationship, which can lead to long-lasting partnerships and reorders.

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Another benefit of an ecommerce portal for brands is the potential for increased efficiency. By reducing the amount of manual data input required, online portals help save brand employees' time, which they can then dedicate to other more important business-driving activities. 

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Using an ecommerce portal also allows brands to capture valuable data around what buyers are ordering and when. These sales insights can help brands to easily identify bestsellers as well as weak spots in their collections, and can be used as a strategic guide to steer future business decisions. 

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How Do Ecommerce Portals Benefit Retailers?

Ecommerce portals offer retailers curated discovery, making it easier for them to find high-quality inventory from brands that they can trust. From the comfort of their office, they can instantly search through thousands of items to find the perfect missing piece to their assortment. 

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B2B portals not only help retailers discover new brands, but they also make it incredibly easy for them to order from them too. Simple ‘add to cart’ functionalities mean buyers can place orders at any time of the day or night, without needing to ask a brand for assistance. This allows them to work more efficiently in their own timezone and helps obtain stock much more quickly than if they were to use traditional in-person methods.

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Online wholesale platforms also allow regional and store managers to easily view the same online linesheets and provide the buying team with input based on local customer knowledge. This makes it much easier for multi-door retail chains to create the optimal centralized order.

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Which Wholesale Ecommerce Portal Is Best For Fashion Brands? 

Designed for the industry’s unique wholesale needs, JOOR is fashion’s only end-to-end ecommerce portal. It offers brands innovative virtual showrooms, which they can customize to create a truly unique digital shopping experience for buyers, and it allows buyers to easily source new brands with capabilities for filtering suitable lines from around the world by factors including price and category.

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The results speak for themselves. Using JOOR, brands experience a 9x higher success rate in acquiring new retailer clients compared to traditional prospecting methods. 78% of new clients order again, placing on average more than 5 orders within the first year.

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JOOR understands how the industry works and creates solutions to match. The JOOR iPad app provides hybrid selling support at traditional trade shows, so buyers can easily place orders in person, and brands can instantly get live stock updates so they can tell people visiting their booth the most up-to-date information on inventory availability. It’s helped brands such as Belstaff reduce their wholesale operations workload by 80% — representing a significant cost savings.

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JOOR hosts its own curated online events known as JOOR Passport shows. These digital trade shows bring together top brands and retailers from around the world, allowing brands to showcase their offerings and gain visibility to international retailers and giving retailers access to shop some of the best fashion in the world. To date, JOOR Passport events have attracted nearly 500K retail visitors from 174 countries around the world, with nearly 1 million products sold.

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In Conclusion

A B2B ecommerce portal can be a valuable tool to help with wholesale expansion. It can offer many benefits, including digital linesheets, easy order management, access to high-value networks and data insights. 

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Investing in the right platform can help to digitize your wholesale process—saving time, increasing efficiency, and reducing the need for traditional manual data input and in-person events.

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Want to try the market-leading B2B ecommerce portal for the fashion industry? Schedule a JOOR demo today!

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