How do manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors increase their bottom lines with digital commerce? Here, we reveal the B2B success stories of Cargo Crew, TROX, Geberit and Tamron Europe — and how they capitalize on composable commerce.
Amidst the massive demand for digital-first B2B sales since the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have taken on the Herculean task of offering eCommerce portals at a breakneck speed. The ones that transformed their customer journeys thrived and are now looking at the next phase of this evolution: Expanding their portals into more robust omnichannel and B2C-like experiences to reach new markets, increase customer acquisition and retention and, of course, boost revenue long-term.
With the unparalleled acceleration in B2B digital commerce, projected to exceed 18.97 trillion USD by 2028, B2B organizations are compelled to modernize their eCommerce infrastructure faster than ever to stay competitive and increase ROI (returns on investments) . Composable commerce is quickly gaining ground in B2B commerce as a way to leverage agility and meet customer expectations.
So, how are B2B practitioners turning their composable investments into new revenue streams with commercetools Composable Commerce? Let’s explore four customer success stories to get you inspired.
How Cargo Crew increased ROI with composable commerce
The times of perceiving B2B buyers as faceless corporations are gone. They are consumers, just like you and me, constantly exposed to the most exciting ways to purchase goods and services. This new paradigm translates into a massive demand: 73% of B2B buyers want personalized and B2C-like experiences. And where there’s demand, there’s a reward, with 77% of B2B companies using direct one-to-one personalization to increase market share.
These nuggets of insight point to the urgency for B2B experiences to become B2C in disguise. This shift is recognized by market leaders such as Australia’s largest fashion workwear company, Cargo Crew. With composable commerce, the business builds custom B2B websites dedicated to strategic clients to streamline the complex uniform supply chain process and facilitate easy 24/7 ordering of curated uniform ranges, including categories, images, pricing and catalog. This tailored site enables clients to purchase uniforms in bulk and personalize products with embroidery, monograms, emojis and logos, resembling a B2C-like shopping experience.
Through shared content and development of free multi-site, flexible accounts that support B2C, B2B and B2B2C, our technology allows us to ‘play small, market-wide.’ We have created scale within our business by being able to quickly launch and customize a web of eCommerce sites across our complex business
Director of Business Operations, Cargo Crew
Since launching the new eCommerce platform, Cargo Crew has seen a significant uplift in online revenue by 34%, in addition to growing 10% in transactions and 19% in ordered items. Furthermore, the company saved an estimated 2,000 hours of client service and customer administration time compared to a manual ordering process. Now, online shopping represents 73% of total transactions and 38% of business revenue.
How TROX improved CX with personalized products paired with eCommerce
In B2B, it’s common to tailor products to fit unique customer needs. Reflecting customizations into eCommerce journeys is a recurring challenge, as digital product configurations must be flexible and modular enough to power limitless made-to-order product variations.
A B2B components supplier for room ventilation and air conditioning, TROX is the epitome of product customization to fulfill bespoke customer requirements. With a composable architecture, TROX created a sophisticated product finder and configurator that supports up to 30 million possible configurations. Thanks to an algorithm permanently running in the background, the company’s solution can determine if the customer’s desired components are compatible — and if the combination can be produced at all.
The commercetools solution gave us the flexibility we needed to ensure the constant growth of our systems. It is in line with our strategy to be able to grow in a modular and flexible manner in order to be able to ideally reflect the demands of our customers.
Head of Marketing & Digital Sales, TROX
The configurator is easy to use and provides crucial CX (customer experience) information such as expected delivery time, pricing information and lifecycle costs on the myTROX web store, establishing it as the foundation for the company’s future growth.
How Geberit boosted product discovery with composable commerce
B2B players with vast catalogs featuring thousands of product variations face an enormous challenge in product discovery, compounded with the need to display accurate and relevant information on product detail pages (PDP). At its core, B2B catalogs must be flexible and scalable to offer an intuitive purchasing experience and increase sales conversions.
Geberit, an international manufacturer and supplier of sanitary technology products, faced that complexity head-on in its mission to boost product discovery. With the flexibility and agility of composable commerce, the company can power product data across various retail channels with technical details and the option to compile shopping lists and download data; an impossible task for rigid platforms such as monoliths.
Now that the first channel — the online product catalog — is able to pull up product data from the multi-channel business solution, the next natural step is to ensure that all remaining websites, apps, tools, etc., are connected to the new interface.
Head of Product Data Management Applications, Geberit
With such an intuitive buying experience for wholesalers, tradespeople, architects and even consumers across 40+ countries, Geberit is primed for a revenue boom.
How Tamron Europe generated new revenue streams with D2C commerce
B2B manufacturers of consumer goods have historically used the D2C (direct-to-consumer) model to experiment with digital, find new customers and increase the bottom line, from FMCG companies such as Danone to well-known brands like Bang & Olufsen.
A notable example of D2C success is Tamron, a Japan-based manufacturer of camera lenses. The company has historically sold its products through distributors, local dealers and online platforms like Amazon. The European subsidiary, Tamron Europe, learned through a customer journey analysis that consumers were visiting its website to purchase products, which led to the decision to integrate a complementary web shop to serve end-customers directly.
commercetools was the most advanced system that we looked at. What we've learned over the last 2.5 years is that you can't predict the future. And we wanted a system that can be modified and adapted to our systems in any way possible. If we had chosen a system that, let's say, wasn't as versatile as, say, commercetools, then we would have run the risk of having to work more on other parts if changes were needed in the future.
MARKETING MANAGER, TAMRON EUROPE
The manufacturer started rolling out the web shop in Germany and Austria, and expanded to 27 European countries soon after. Thanks to the flexibility of a composable architecture, Tamron works closely with distributors in its D2C approach by giving them access to the Merchant Center (commercetools’ business tooling) to run localized promotions. This way, the company enables collaboration across the distribution chain to uplift revenue and customer experiences.
Turbocharging growth with composable commerce
There’s no denying the correlation between a high level of digital maturity with revenue and growth: The more digitally agile B2B firms are, the more likely they can capture opportunities and maximize ROI presented by eCommerce.
As the success stories show, the key to meeting customer expectations is providing B2C-like, personalized and intuitive experiences. Achieving such a bliss state can only be achieved with a flexible, scalable and agile technology under the hood, such as composable commerce.
Matt Swan, Technical Product Manager at ACE Southern, revealed the staggering impact of composable commerce in revenue growth: “We’re already seeing returns on the average order value size 2.5 times what we had previously. And a big part of that is just because we can create a better experience, we can get things out faster. Our team doesn’t have to work within the confines of the monolith anymore.”
The IDC MarketScape Worldwide B2B Digital Commerce Applications for Midmarket Growth 2023-2024 also unveiled that “By embracing API-first composable commerce, which offers modular architecture for rapid innovation, MMG [midmarket growth] B2B firms can swiftly adapt to market changes to optimize revenue generation and capitalize on emerging CX opportunities.”
Indeed, a multitude of B2B organizations have recognized that a composable approach is invaluable to meet their growth plans and revenue targets. Are you ready to get started?
To get all the insights on the evolution of the B2B commerce market and uncover priorities and ideas for your digital journey, read our guide on Pivotal Trends and Predictions in B2B Digital Commerce in 2024.
Manuela Marques Tchoe is a Content Writer at commercetools. She was a Content and Product Marketing Director at conversational commerce provider tyntec. She has written content in partnership with Facebook, Rakuten Viber and other social media platforms.