Episode 72: Scaling A B2B eCommerce Marketplace

The Hard Truth About B2B eCommerce podcast continues onto the next episode by welcoming Gil Bar Lev, CEO of HomeRoots to talk about challenges and logistical hurdles of the furniture industry.

Gil Bar Lev eCommerce career goes back to the early days of Toy’s R Us and Amazon! Fast forward 20+ years and he is now growing a B2B marketplace called HomeRoots that is tackling the complexity of the furniture industry. Furniture is highly complex and is currently difficult for businesses to get into their hands at reasonable B2B prices. HomeRoots solves this by taking international companies and directly bringing their products to US-based businesses. We talk about how to solve the complexity of B2B at scale and what it takes to grow a marketplace.

Episode 72: Scaling A B2B eCommerce Marketplace

In this episode, co-hosts Isaiah Bollinger, CEO of Trellis, and Timothy Peterson, President & COO of Speir Digital, Inc, are welcoming Gil Bar Lev, CEO of HomeRoots, to discuss:

• How to help international companies to get their goods to the U.S. market through eCommerce infrastructure 
• Evolution of consumer-facing marketplaces
• Advancement of eCommerce
• Scaling your business with the power of eCommerce
• How to create B2B experience that is similar to B2C
• The future of augmented reality
• How to leverage overstock products while keeping the distribution costs low
• Shipping problems in the furniture industry
• Challenges of small and medium businesses
• How to get a warehouse advantage
• Marketing to overseas by transforming the messages to another language
• Sustainability, traceability and other trends in the furniture business
• Common mistakes that medium businesses make
• How to build demand and sell in specific areas
• The importance of the best tech talents to lead the digital transformation
• How to make buying processes easier
• Dealing with unreliable partners
• The importance of your initial infrastructure when build an online store

This podcast’s origin story

Podcasts are still a relatively new medium for content, but just because they are new doesn’t mean they lack power. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Podcasts have a unique ability to reach people on their time, whenever it is convenient for them – a way that previously did not majorly exist. Podcast listeners can take the information wherever they go and absorb it as they see fit. And that’s exactly what we are looking to do here. We want to reach a new audience of B2B eCommerce enthusiasts.

This podcast is all about B2B eCommerce. B2B is a different breed of eCommerce and it needs a different breed of Podcast. We get into the nitty-gritty of integrations, adoption, platforms, data and so much more regarding what makes B2B difficult to make successful for eCommerce!

We noticed that a few B2C podcasts exist on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, but nothing designed for the B2B eCommerce community. B2B and B2C eCommerce have a lot of overlap, but even more differences. Each has a different set of requirements and customer demands that impact project scope. Let’s call a spade a spade. B2B is harder, more complicated, and harder to market. But it is also a bigger piece of the pie. The eCommerce B2B roadmap to success is not as cut and dry as B2C and that’s why we have started this podcast.

B2C platforms like Magento and Shopify have large communities that support and have done the entre-level work of most projects. The same community does not exist for B2B, but we are starting to build it. The ecosystem may not be as mature, but as experts in the space, we hope this podcast will help some people wake up and reevaluate their online sales strategy.

The first podcast examines major trends around B2B eCommerce as well as answering all of the above questions.  Take a listen for yourself and let us know what you think!

We will be posting new episodes with special guests weekly. You can listen on our dedicated podcast website and download the podcast on all major channels: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Overcast, Pocket Cast, Castro, Castbox, Podchaser, Podcast Addict, Deezer, Listen Notes, and RSS Feed.