BY MARK B. SOLOMON, SENIOR EDITOR
3PL REPORT
transportationreport
Amazon:
Just can’t wait
to be king
Amazon rules the B2C online domain. Now,
it has set its sights on the larger B2B space.
The plain may never look the same.
IN 25 YEARS OF WORKING WITH MANUFACTURERS AND DISTRIButors, Linda Taddonio, co-founder, CFO, and e-commerce guru at
Minneapolis-based business-to-business software developer Insite
Software, has heard enough corporate boasts to know when a company’s claims are legitimate and when its pants are on fire.
So it was a revealing moment in mid-January when, as
Taddonio was breezing through a webinar on Amazon.com’s then
nine-month-old B2B offering, Amazon Supply, she hesitated after
showing a slide describing the unit’s mission to offer the world’s
largest parts selection to the industrial maintenance, repair, and
operations (MRO) buyer.
“This is the first time in my career where a business has set the
earth as a defined territory,” Taddonio said, with a tone in her
voice that sent an unmistakable message that Amazon’s vow, as
audacious as it sounded, should not be taken lightly.
In less than 20 words, Taddonio summed up what could become
commerce’s next signature moment. Already with a dominant
position in the $186 billion-a-year domestic online business-to
consumer (B2C) segment, Seattle-based Amazon has now turned
its attention to the U.S. business-to-business (B2B) market, which
in 2013 will generate $559 billion in sales, double that of three
years ago, according to a mid-March forecast from research and
advisory firm Forrester. How Amazon plays it and the changes
wrought as a result could reshape the industrial distribution landscape for decades to come.
