The direct-to-consumer luggage brand is undergoing a larger restructuring that also includes “the elimination of a traditional executive team structure,” according to a statement shared with Retail Dive. 

Staffing changes were made because “the team recognizes the need for a more nimble approach amidst the changing consumer landscape,” according to the statement. 

“We’re reconfiguring the traditional exec team structure in order to promote better decision-making,” CEO Jen Rubio told Inc. “What I think this is doing is setting us up to be able to grow the right teams to work on the right projects.”

“Disruption has always been at the core of our company’s DNA,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Away is dedicated to delivering the highest-quality travel products and experiences to our customers, and we believe that these steps will better position us to continue to be an innovative leader in the category.”

Away is No. 391 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s leading retailers by online sales.

Changes at Away

Away held an earlier round of layoffs in May 2023. At the time, it cut 22 employees, including chief commercial officer Laura Willensky.

In 2023, the retailer also expanded its executive team. It hired Carissa Barrett as vice president of retail. She previously worked at Byredo, Saint Laurent, and Prada (No. 187 in Digital Commerce 360’s Europe Database). At the same time, Away hired Amanda Brody as vice president of brand. Brody previously worked at L’Oreal (No. 17 in Europe) and Charlotte Tilbury. 

In January 2023, Away brought on Carla Dunham as chief marketing officer with a mandate to increase marketing spending and capitalize on post-pandemic travel.

Away may have grown its executive team too quickly, Rubio told Inc.

“I was really proud that Away was able to attract people with such impressive accolades and such great experience,” she said. “Maybe I was in a little bit of a rush to have the company grow up so quickly, and in the midst of that, we lost a little bit of the magic that got us here.”

Away’s possible sale

Away was exploring a potential sale in 2023, Bloomberg reported.

Rubio told Inc. that’s not the plan for 2024. However, “there has to be some plan on the horizon” for an IPO or acquisition eventually, she said.

This year, Away will focus on increasing the number of product launches and working with retailers on wholesale, according to Rubio.

Other online retail and ecommerce layoffs

Away joins other retailers and marketplaces in announcing recent layoffs. EBay plans to lay off 1,000 workers, 9% of its total workforce. EBay ranks No. 6 in Digital Commerce 360’s Global Online Marketplaces database. The database ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by third-party GMV.

Macy’s, Amazon, and Wayfair also all cut their workforces in the first month of 2024. In addition, REI announced that it would lay off 357 employees, about 2.2% of the retailer’s total workforce, The Seattle Times reported.

Macy’s ranks No. 17 in the 2023 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000. Amazon ranks No. 1, Wayfair ranks No. 10, and REI ranks No. 67.

Levi Strauss (No. 191) also said it would lay off 10% to 15% of its corporate workforce, and Estee Lauder (No. 43) will lay off 3% to 5%.

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• Hospitality
• Corporate wellness
• Multi-family residential
• Education
• Health care
• Gyms
• Community wellness

Peloton says it will use the new program, Peloton for Business, to offer equipment and content-based solutions to B2B customers as part of its commitment to empower anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Peloton for Business

The launch of Peloton for Business comes about three months after the manufacturer launched a new marketing campaign to revitalize its brand by shifting the perception that Peloton equipment is only for in-home use. Instead, the new campaign’s messaging will position Peloton as being accessible to fitness enthusiasts of all levels and ages.

With Peloton for Business, commercial clients can provide their employees unlimited access to a Peloton Bike, the Peloton app — which provides access to Peloton instructor-led classes across myriad exercise disciplines — preferred pricing on Peloton equipment, and unique corporate engagement experiences as an employee benefit.

Unlimited access to Peloton bikes

The Peloton app typically costs as much as $24 a month, depending on the options for which users sign up. Commercial clients can also use unlimited access to Peloton bikes as a way to allow their customers to use the equipment free of charge in hotels, multi-family residential gyms, community wellness centers, as well as corporate office gyms and campus recreation facilities.

Peloton for Business will also provide commercial clients access to enterprise-level partnerships that deliver exclusive programming and offers for the audiences of partner brands and organizations. Currently, Peloton for Business is available in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia.

Peloton says that, worldwide, 7.5 million riders have used a Peloton bike in a commercial setting the past 12 months. In addition, more than 93% of Peloton’s commercial clients that offer Peloton Corporate Wellness as an employee benefit have renewed the benefit.

Peloton personnel

Greg Hybl, SVP and general manager, Peloton for Business

As part its commitment to B2B sales, Peloton hired former American Express Co. veteran Greg Hybl as senior vice president and general manager of Peloton for Business. Hybl brings more than 20 years in the strategic partnership, commercial, and business development spaces.

“Our goal is to be a solution-oriented partner that provides customizable options for each client’s unique needs, regardless of a company’s size,” Hybl says in a statement. “By offering both holistic and individualized solutions, we can now widen our client base to include small and mid-sized organizations, in addition to the larger enterprise businesses we currently serve.”

Peloton’s commercial clients represent a variety of industries and sizes. Commercial clients include employee benefits management platform provider Sequoia, hotelier Hilton, the YMCA, Volvo Car USA, and file-hosting service Dropbox.

Seqouia recently launched Peloton in its Wellbeing Bundles, an invite-only network of curated health and wellness vendors. Sequoia clients now have the opportunity to offer Peloton’s classes and corporate engagement experiences to their teams.

“In our pursuit to provide our clients with the most innovative wellness benefits, Peloton for Business was a natural progression as it offers the opportunity to provide employees with access to world-class fitness and wellness content anywhere, anytime, and enables team members to feel more connected to each other,” Kaleana Quibell, Seqouia’s vice president of Wellbeing, says in a statement.

Hilton expands Peloton deal internationally

In October 2022, Hilton began adding Peloton bikes to fitness centers at its properties in the United States. Hilton has since expanded the agreement to properties in Puerto Rico, Germany, the United Kingdom, and participating properties in Canada. Hilton has deployed about 5,800 Peloton Bikes at its properties in those countries and Puerto Rico.

“We know that wellness is a top priority for travelers around the world,” Amanda Al-Masri, Hilton’s vice president of global wellness, says in a statement. “And we have delighted so many guests with this partnership.”

The YMCA is expanding its partnership with Peloton to deploy Peloton bikes at select locations through a new agreement with YMCA associations in San Antonio and Chicago. The YMCA will pilot an integrated hardware and app experience in dedicated Peloton spaces within their fitness facilities in those two cities. The pilot aims to increase accessibility to fitness through industry-leading content, experiential activations, and community events.

Volvo Car USA is partnering with Peloton to improve, reward, and support its employees’ health goals in and out of the office. It provides access to the Peloton App, a Peloton All Access Membership, and discounts on hardware including the Bike, Bike+, Tread, and Guide. The automaker has also placed Peloton Bikes in its existing employee fitness centers.

Dropbox, which partnered with Peloton during the Covid-19 pandemic to create a full-service wellness platform, provides employees in the U.S. access to the Peloton App, Peloton All Access Membership, and discounts on hardware including the Bike, Bike+, Tread, and Guide.

Peter Lucas is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy.

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Digital Commerce 360: What is driving B2B companies like Parts Town to expand online?

Linda Ramsey

Linda Ramsey: Everyone is a consumer at heart, and the lines of B2C vs. B2B ecommerce are becoming blurred. Our customers expect the same features and benefits for their B2B shopping experience as they see in their B2C shopping experience. At Parts Town, we strive to make the parts ordering experience easy, educational and efficient for our customers. So applying a B2C approach to our ecommerce options is a natural fit. As our customers demand new and improved digital capabilities, our approach to new and expanded digital offerings will continue to evolve.

DC360: What are the chief gains you’re realizing?

Ramsey: In 2021, we enjoyed 33% annual revenue growth, hitting more than $1 billion for the first time. We have carried significant growth and momentum into 2022. And we expect to grow to over $1.8 billion in revenue this year. [This will be achieved] with continuous innovation, new acquisitions and partnerships, new investors, international expansion, and new master distribution programs with industry-leading manufacturers. Much of our growth has come through ecommerce and digital marketing.

Parts Town also recently reached the milestone of 200,000 downloads of our app. It is the first and number one mobile app in the industry. Customers can search and purchase the right parts. They can also track their order, read and save equipment manuals, chat with a Parts Expert, view interactive diagrams, and check out all from wherever they are working at a desk or in a commercial kitchen.

DC360: What is the most valuable piece of advice you have on how to launch online B2B sales? Or increase them?

Ramsey: Innovation is part of our culture at Parts Town. We are always looking for ways to improve our customer experience and make it easier for customers to find and buy parts. Although we are a distribution company at heart, we are an innovator first and a digital company that happens to provide distribution solutions. Allow your business the grace to innovate, test and evolve. The best way to improve online sales is to keep providing more tools and an easier experience, investing in innovation and digital marketing. We continue to grow because we know how important those investments are.

DC360: Regarding COVID-19 and supply chain disruption, what is the biggest adaptation your company has made?

Ramsey: Parts Town has invested more in inventory than ever before to make sure we meet the needs of our customers. We’ve continued to review how we stock and order parts using website data and other proprietary information to stay ahead of what our customers need.

From a team perspective, we’ve had to get creative with how we hire and scale our business. Our team had to quickly reshape how we interview candidates to maintain the experiential and human elements critical to cultivating our workplace culture. This included setting up ‘drive-thru’ hiring events to reorganizing our distribution center floor to accommodate socially-distanced candidate tours of our facility.  (Thanks to innovative safety protocols adapted by our existing team members.) Our team remained committed to keeping our workforce culture and core values at the center of our hiring practices.

To continue to scale, we’ve added a lot of automation during the pandemic to accelerate the time from order to shipment.

DC360: What excites you the most in new digital commerce technology?

Ramsey: Everyone says AI, and I’m going to say it too. The ability to scale our business, how we market and how we make parts easier to find, identify and purchase can all be improved through predictive data. I am excited to see the unique ways we will use AI at Parts Town.

DC360: Going forward, what do you see as the most significant commerce challenges and opportunities?

Ramsey: As digital trends continue to evolve at a B2C level, our customers will expect those same things at a B2B level. Keeping up with these evolving demands will continue to be our greatest challenge – but also our greatest opportunity.

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Justin Racine

McDonald’s Corp. wasn’t always a multibillion-dollar, global fast-food goliath; it was quite the opposite during its humble beginnings. You may know the story, Maurice (Mac) and Richard founded the sleeping giant back during the late 1940s/early 1950s and decided to team up with Ray Kroc, who ultimately ended up pushing the brothers out of the business and bought them out in the early 1960s.

To its credit, McDonald’s was innovative from the start and continues to find ways to think creatively about its business. It pioneered the fast-food business through a limited but precise ordering menu, a walk-up ordering window, and, for a lack of better words, an assembly line of fast-food glory, churning meals out in just about the same time it was taking customers to place orders.

This first inspiration sparked many others to follow. McDonald’s introduced the drive-through in the mid-1970s alongside with breakfast menu items. The Happy Meal and Play Place come out in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. New menu items took form after a backlash arose regarding the health and nutritional contents of the company’s food.

Then we arrive at the current day, where customers are offered free Wi-Fi, ordering via kiosk, and home-delivered meals. If there is one thing you can say about McDonald’s, it’s this: they continue to push the envelope and create new engaging services and menu items.

But along the way, there has been one innovation that maybe didn’t get the newsworthy notoriety it deserved, and that is the simple phrase: “Would you like fries with that?” This phrase has more to do with McDonald’s success than maybe anything else discussed above, and here’s why.

A ‘gum at the counter’ tactic for B2B sellers

By training their employees to ask if a customer wanted to order fries if they didn’t already order them with their burger, McDonald’s provided an opportunity for the customer to say yes. It’s the classic cross-sell, not to be confused with upsells (i.e., Do you want to supersize that?). This cross-sell tactic allowed McDonald’s to capture the “gum at the checkout counter.” They were able to increase their revenues and profit margins by completing a burger with French fries.

It seems simple, and it is, but this same logic can be applied today in the B2B ecommerce space.

McDonald’s is successful because they know most people love French fries as a side with their burgers, just like you know what your customers want or need with their business and industrial products. Regardless of what industry you’re in, there are products and services that customers need to procure in correlation. An ecommerce computer vendor likely wants to also offer you an extended warranty on the laptop you just purchased. An ecommerce healthcare supplier likely wants to know if you need to purchase tissues with the allergy over-the-counter allergy medication product that is in your cart. You can see the correlations here.

The key to finding success in building out an ecommerce cross-sell model is truly understanding the customer, what they want, when they want it, and how you introduce cross-selling into your sales process. McDonald’s knew the right time to ask customers if they wanted fries with their order was always right when the customer was done ordering.

Depending on what business you’re in, it may make sense to ask your own “Do you want fries with that?” question in areas like product-landing pages and online shopping carts. This can also work even after the order is placed with a dynamic targeted email that identifies a cross-sell product suggested to the user with a pitch like “We noticed you just placed an order for Product A—76% of customers that order Product A also order Product B—click here and add product B to your order today and receive both in 2 days.”

The art of cross-selling—and upselling

Make no mistake, cross-selling is an art, and it takes time to understand which channel, product and customer, etc. will best fit in with your messaging.

You’ll likely find some products work better than others, depending on a multitude of factors. Looking at areas around seasonality, for example, will be critical in the example mentioned above around tissues and OTC allergy medication.

Let’s say the script is changed and someone orders tissues without the OTC allergy medication; you may want to cross-sell that OTC product. But if it’s the middle of January, an OTC allergy product is likely not a good fit for the cross-sell, but a cold/flu medication may be. Factors like these must be managed as effectively as possible.

Cross-sells are a fantastic way for ecommerce organizations to increase key performance indicators like conversion rates and sales to drive growth, but this goes much further than that. Customers today demand exceptional experiences, and if ecommerce organizations can create these exceptional experiences by offering up products that customers may not be thinking of, they will start to create stickiness and loyalty.

So, the only ask I’ll leave you with is this. After you have built out your cross-sell categories and items, and you’re finally ready to pitch the “Do you want fries with that?” question to your customers, be ready to ask the next (up-sell) question after they agree to the fries:

“Do you want to supersize that?”

Justin Racine is a senior commerce consultant at Perficient Digital, a digital technology and services agency focused on digital transformation. He is a former director of ecommerce and marketing at distributor Geriatric Medical and Surgical Supply Inc. Follow him on LinkedIn.

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Gene Carbonara, vice president, ecommerce and digital, US Foods

The distributor of food and related products, with more than $24 billion in sales for the fiscal year ended Dec. 29, 2018, has built up a strength in ecommerce sales to restaurants, corporate kitchens, grocers and others by learning what customers need and how they prefer to buy it, Gene Carbonara, vice president of ecommerce and digital, said during the B2B workshop track at the 2019 IRCE @ RetailX conference.

The company’s entry into ecommerce was prompted by major hotel chains, who needed 24/7 access to products ranging from food products and cooking equipment for their restaurants, in-room meal service and on-site convenience stores to hand soap and towels for their hotel guest rooms. “Our move to ecommerce was necessitated by our largest customers,” Carbonara said.

Helping out busy chefs

From there, US Foods went to apply what it learned about ecommerce to other customers as well, developing ways to help small as well as large companies better operate their businesses. Carbonara noted that 60% of restaurants fail within their first year, and 80% within five years, so US Foods has devised ways to help them better manage their product inventory and profit margins. “Many of our customers are chefs, so we help them with menu-planning and profitability,” he said.

One way is through developing customized product-ordering lists that organize the particular type of products a customer routinely orders. The distributor’s customers order 300 products in an average-size order, and assistance in managing product lists has shown to increase order accuracy and reduce the number of product returns.

For example, “PF Chang can’t buy just any rice,” Carbonara said. “It needs to be standardized. Understanding your inventory is essential to running a business.”

Hold those French fries

The average customer orders from US Foods more than twice a week, and often needs to order quickly as if their “hair’s on fire,” he added. To help ensure they order what they need, US Foods uses data compiled on customers’ past orders to give them online alerts during the ordering and checkout process asking if they forgot to order a particular item.

The distributor has also learned to improve online product recommendations by combining multiple elements of information on products and customers’ needs, including sales reps, web analytics and current inventory records. Carbonara noted one example of how US Foods will recommend oven-baked French fries to a commercial kitchen based in a high-rise building. “We have to use all three elements,” he said, to realize that the customer serves French fries, but that it’s based in a high-rise building where it can’t use an oil-filled deep fryer, and needs to order only available French fries made for baking in an oven.

Even with its large volume of online orders, however, US Foods is still working to improve and increase the number of ways customers can order through self-service ecommerce to make their jobs easier. “We’re not quite there yet,” Carbonara said.

Other things it’s looking into include are wearable mobile devices customers can use to place online orders.

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While Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky was courting the hospitality expert, he offered to Uber to Conley’s home to discuss final details of his new position with the startup. The word “Uber” used as a verb caused some confusion.

“I said to him, ‘You’re going to do what?’” laughed Conley on Wednesday at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition @ RetailX in Chicago. The self-proclaimed bricks-and-mortar guy had to confess his phone wasn’t exactly familiar with the app.

On the third day of his new job as Airbnb’s head of global hospitality and strategy, Conley found himself in a conference room surrounded by a dozen engineers who were half his age and making tech jokes that were going over his head.

“I had been brought into the company as a seasoned expert in my field, but in that particular room, I felt like a newbie amongst those tech geniuses, so I did my best to just be invisible,” he said.

While Conley was excited about the prospect of transforming a small tech startup into a global hospitality giant, he was reporting to someone 21 years younger. Moreover, he worried about his relevancy.

“I realized after my first week on the job with the kind of lingo that was being thrown around that my old-school, bricks-and-mortar wisdom wasn’t all that valuable in this new [online] world,” said Conley.

At a time when there are five generations occupying the same workplace, there can be tension and miscommunication. According to Conley, this is particularly an issue in the retail world, where bricks-and-mortar veterans might not have the digital fluency of ecommerce teams, yet younger employees may not have as much leadership experience. But he said the key is to tap into each group’s strengths and to create an “intergenerational pipeline of wisdom,” or a Match.com for employers to facilitate mentorship programs.

Conley, who spent four years in a full-time role at Airbnb and transitioned into an advisory capacity two years ago, said leveraging different skillsets of employees across all ages is necessary given the growing number of older people who are in the workforce and dealing with professional power shifting to young people. He cited a number of statistics that describe the landscape:

• Nearly 40% of Americans have a boss who is younger than them, and by 2025, the majority of people in the workforce will be in that position.
• The average age of an employee at a Silicon Valley tech giant is 30.
• The fastest-growing demographic in the labor force is people over 60. That group showed a 35% growth in the last five years.
• Between 2016 and 2026, almost half of the labor force growth will come from people 60 and over.

“The more I’ve thought about this, the more I realize that we, as different generations in the workplace often operate like isolationist countries,” Conley said. “We share a continent and borders but don’t share a common dialect or, frankly, point of view sometimes.”

To combat what Conley calls the irrelevancy gap, he counted on a 27-year-old coworker to be his digital intelligence tutor and would ask her to decode 16 different notes he’d scrawl down during meetings filled with technical jargon.

And in return, she gave him an epiphany. One day, she pulled him aside and told him his “fact knowledge”—such as knowing how many rooms a maid cleans in an eight-hour shift—doesn’t matter in the home-sharing world of Airbnb.

Instead, she told him the importance of his fact knowledge is “evaporating,” while his process knowledge is what’s valuable now, such as the best ways to motivate and communicate with fellow employees and keep them in the loop. Conley realized his organizational savvy was what he could offer.

The post IRCE: How different generations navigate a tech-focused world appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

But there are two areas of business where Sands, headquartered in Paradise, Nev., doesn’t gamble or take on high risk. Those areas are B2B ecommerce and e-procurement, Sands senior vice president and chief procurement officer Norbert Riezler told attendees last week at the SAP Ariba annual conference in Austin, Texas. SAP Ariba is the electronic networking arm of business operations software company SAP SE.

Each year as the company grows and expands internationally, more of Sands’ corporate purchase contracts are flowing through e-procurement and the SAP Ariba network.

$2.4 billion in purchases

Last year Sands, which operates resort, hotel and gaming properties in Macao (China), Singapore and Las Vegas, processed $2.4 billion worth of business transactions through SAP Ariba.

Norbert Riezler,
Chief Procurement Officer,
Las Vegas Sands

One competitive edge in e-procurement Sands claims to have over other resort and gaming companies is the integration of the SAP Ariba network with its warehouse management system from HighJump Software. “I think we are the only company I am aware of in the hospitality, gaming or integrated resort business that has figured out how to use all of the spend in one solution,” Riezler told attendees.

But in order to use advanced electronic networking integrated with ecommerce and e-procurement applications, it took Sands about 30 months to complete all of the needed integration work, he says. “You need to have an unwavering support from your senior leadership—inevitably there will be a divisional president typically that thinks the system isn’t for them and tries to do a run around so you have top support.”

Lessons learned

Sands also learned other key implementation lessons while launching an integrated business and technology approach to e-procurement. Among them: one leader needs to be in charge and be prepared to spend lots of time making decisions; and that new business processes must be part of the launch.

“You need to be heavily involved both as a procurement or finance leader in launching the system—there are literally hundreds of decisions that have to be made as you are launching it and even post-launch,” Riezler told attendees. “You also really have to start over with your processes—these people that developed the system are really smart, and if you have the system flow the way it was designed and change your processes, you will be much better off launching the system that way.”

The Sands’ e-procurement network through SAP Ariba today is utilized by about 6,000 internal users and another 6,000 users that link to the network as suppliers and receive purchase orders or submit invoices, Riezler says. The network, which handles 800,000 purchase orders annually, is used by Sands to negotiate 8,000 contracts each year.

Busy chickens for busy casinos

“In the last 12 months we put $2.9 billion worth of spend through the system,” he says. “We buy 23 million pounds of beef, 22 million eggs per year from some really busy chickens and we buy six million-rolls of toilet paper—the most important thing is we need it fast.”

Over time, Sands has built its e-procurement system to resemble the just-in-time supply chain methods used by major vehicle manufacturers. “When our chefs come in in the morning and they prepare the dim sum, their orders need to go out that time in the morning, he said.”When we have big conventions with 15,000 guests that you feed three times a day, and when you only have 72 hours to confirm the orders, they need to go out real-time,” Riezler says. “I used to work for Ford Motor Co. and we have introduced many of the just-in-time principles to our industry.”

A major e-procurement network undergoes a lot of stress and, if systems fail, business operations face immediate headaches, he told attendees. “When orders are raised and they don’t go out right away, and our buyers come in early in the morning and realize they haven’t gone out, it is pure hell for them,” he said. “They have to then go and download the order, PDF them, e-mail them out and then typically follow up with a phone call to make sure the suppliers have gotten the orders—so when SAP Ariba does infrastructure upgrades that have system outages, we feel it.”

Networks and systems need to work because Sands does virtually all of its corporate buying and spending, and even contract negotiations, online, Riezler told attendees. “Other than the taxes we pay, I can’t think of anything that doesn’t run through the system, he says.

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The food-service distributor says 55% of its independent restaurant customers order from it through self-service e-commerce, up from just over 10% in 2013. That has led to a 7% increase in average order value and a 5% increase in customer retention.

US Foods reports a much larger percentage of enterprise customers including restaurant chains ordering electronically. Although it doesn’t break out e-commerce percentages for its largest customers, US Foods says its overall e-commerce penetration among customers was over 70% in 2017, more than 10 percentage points higher than 2013.

2013, in fact, marked an important turning point for the company. That’s also when it launched its mobile app, which it developed in-house to meet the needs of its customers in getting product information and placing orders from wherever they happen to be—a capability particularly crucial to the independent restaurant operators it’s targeting for growth.

Gene Carbonara, vice president, e-commerce and digital, US Foods Inc.

“Mobile is an essential part of where the restaurant business is going,” says Gene Carbonara, vice president of e-commerce and digital. “We make our technology available to customers wherever they are, including a basement restaurant or a walk-in cooler.” The app, he adds, has continued to evolve since debuting in 2013. “We haven’t stopped innovating it since then,” he says. “We work on it all day, every day, all year—we never rest.”

The constant focus on improving its technology has brought US Foods’s customers several new areas of operating help. For example: the ability to manage inventory and orders according to multiple lists on its e-commerce site.

Buyers and purchasing managers can view and manage in-stock inventory levels, orders and invoices in separate lists dedicated to individual operating departments, storage facilities and product categories. “They may have multiple buyers, and they can see what buyers have ordered, view invoices, and make sure they’re not over-ordering,” Carbonara says.

More about US Foods’s digital strategy will appear later this month in a special B2BecNews report on innovation and disruption in B2B e-commerce.

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Together, a team of investors led by Wellington Management Co. and including ICONIQ Capital and Insight Venture Capital, will put $100 million into ezCater Inc., an online marketplace for business catering that claims to have more than 60,000 restaurants and caterers as users. EzCater says it serves a wide range of big and small companies looking for a catering company or restaurant to create a catered meal or special event. Its new funding brings its total venture capital to date to $170 million, it says.

The company, in business as a marketplace since 2007, will use the new funds to add products, expand internationally and add more employees, says CEO Stefania Mallett. In May ezCater, which lists companies such as Astra Zeneca Plc, Redfin and Tesla Inc. as customers, announced it was adding more than 100 new employees and opening another office and call center in Denver.

In the U.S., the catering industry generates $22 billion in sales annually, says research Technomic. EzCater enables businesses to order food from local caterers in markets across the country. The service is available in more than 22,700 cities and towns;  caterers using the marketplace range from local independent restaurants to such national chains as California Pizza Kitchen, Firehouse Subs of America Llc, and P.F. Chang’s China Bistro Inc.

Caterers and restaurants pay ezCater an undisclosed commission to list their availability on the marketplace, which matches up the caterer with a company needing food, beverages and perhaps a venue to host a special event. In addition to its marketplace, ezCater also is developing new online tools to help restaurants receive and manage orders and deliver large scale meals.

For example in May, ezCater launched ezDispatch, which connects restaurants and caterers to third-party delivery companies in their area. EzDispatch is currently available in 50 major markets including Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. ezCater’s target for year-end is to offer the service to 100 markets.

In April EzCater rolled out ezOrdering, a service that lets restaurants take online catering orders on their own website, and ezManage, a catering order management and marketing system.

EzCater didn’t disclose revenue but Mallett says it has been “at least doubling” its revenue annually for the past six years.

In disclosing the new funding ezCater didn’t say where it was looking to expand overseas Sign up for a complimentary subscription to B2BecNews, a newsletter published four times a week with coverage of technology and business trends in the growing B2B e-commerce industry. B2BecNews is owned by Vertical Web Media LLC, which also publishes DigitalCommerce360.com, Internet Retailer and Internet Health Management. Follow Mark Brohan on Twitter @markbrohan.

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Amazon reported Tuesday that Amazon Business now has more than 150,000 registered buyers and 40,000 sellers on its site for Germany, at Amazon.de/business, and more than 90,000 buyers and 30,000 sellers on its U.K. site, at Amazon.co.uk/business. It also announced several new features on each site, developed with feedback from customers, including improved ways to manage electronic invoices and payment records, and access to customized lists of products.

Florian Böhme, head of Amazon Business, Germany

“We want to offer business customers a new standard in B2B e-commerce with Amazon Business—and for us, that’s still Day One,” says Florian Böhme, head of Amazon Business in Germany.

Amazon said the companies using Amazon Business in Germany and the U.K. range from self-employed individuals and small firms to large multinational corporations and public institutions, including universities, health clinics and non-profit organizations.

“Amazon Business has enabled us to take the hassle out of purchasing the items we need to run our operations,” Louisa Collins, head of I.T. and purchasing at the International Institute for Anti-Ageing, a U.K.-based international distribution company, said in a statement issued by Amazon. “Working with Amazon Business has helped us become more efficient with our purchasing for multiple stakeholders, which in turn means we are even more effective in how we service our own customers and end users.”

In Germany, Güven Yilmaz, back-of-house manager at the hotel Waldorf Astoria Berlin, said, “In the luxury hotel industry, there is a constant need for procurement, both in food and beverages and in the non-food sector. With Amazon Business, that can now be ordered quickly and flexibly for each area—the time savings benefits our guests.”

New website features announced this week for both the U.K. and Germany include:

• Business invoice—Improved search and filter features were designed to let buyers find products from Amazon itself and third-party marketplace sellers who display net prices, including taxes; the invoice feature also enables buyers to download invoices that include information on VAT, or value-added tax;
• Product catalog management—Business buyers can configure the Amazon Business product catalog according to their procurement policies. Administrators at buying organizations can define spending approval criteria and restrict access to products or product categories;
• Integration with e-procurement software—Buyers who use e-procurement software from Coupa Software can use the Coupa search function to access millions of products sold by Amazon Business.

The new features add to a list of others deployed earlier, including free same-day delivery in the U.K. on orders of 30 pounds (US$40) or more; the ability of buying organizations in both countries to set spending limits for individual buyers; integration in Germany with e-procurement software from Jaggaer and SAP Ariba; and the ability in both the U.K. and Germany to track and reconcile purchases in line-item detail on all purchases made via a Visa Commercial Card issued by Barclaycard, Citi, HSBC or Lloyds Bank.

In October, Amazon Business announced the launch of Business Prime Shipping, the B2B version of its Amazon Prime two-day shipping service for consumers, for its sites in Germany and the U.S. It has not announced that service for the Amazon Business sites in the U.K., India or Japan. Amazon Business launched sites in India and Japan in September.

“The latest suite of Amazon Business features has been driven by the feedback we’ve received from our customers and are designed to enhance the efficiency, visibility and controls our business customers want in their procurement process,” says Bill Burkland, head of Amazon Business in the U.K.

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