B2B customers: the new retail Eldorado

The crisis in falling purchasing power prompted retailers to turn towards B2B shoppers. As purchasing volumes have been declining in Europe, professional customers have become a new lever for securing revenue. If this dynamic is not new in the home furnishings sector, it is now taking off in the grocery sector, with players such as Walmart, Auchan and Casino jumping in. Mind Retail interviewed several players about their strategy: Emilie Benoit-Vernay (Shopify), Lily Cadell (Ankorstore), Louis Carbonnier (Hokodo), Alexis Delplanque (Djust), Constance Fouquet (Maisons du Monde), Alexandre Onufryk (Redsen), Marco Sacco-Stevanella (ManoMano) and Marc Teulières (Mirakl).

Over the past 12 to 18 months, initiatives from retail companies, which had historically focused on individual customers, have been mushrooming in the B2B sector, as if B2C customers weren’t enough for them. In the grocery sector, the shift is major, with Walmart (Walmart Business offer launched in January 2023), Auchanpro.fr (launched in France in September) and Casino Group. Online, Amazon is already one of the world’s leading wholesalers. The Amazon Supplies business, one of the few teams where the Group is currently recruiting, will account for US$35 billion in GMV this year, according to the Group. That’s a 40% uplift in 2 years.

In the D.I.Y. sector, several retail chains have historically been dedicated to professional customers, like Screwfix, Bricoman, etc. However, this is not true everywhere. In the furniture sector, there aren’t really any specialized B2B players. Hence the mixed B2C and B2B models of Ikea, Maisons du Monde, Vitra and But. It is the same move at Hema home-decoration retailer, based in the Netherlands, which has a B2B strategy. In April 2023, Ikea announced the expansion of a new loyalty program for professionals in the U.S.A.,…

Sophie Baqué