Comments on: Private Label B2B http://www.tradedot.com/2007/11/19/private-label-b2b/ Marketing, Technology, and Entrepreneurial Experience - Blog by Tradedot Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:00:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.2 By: Marketing, Technology, and Entrepreneurial Experience - Blog by Tradedot » Blog Archive Engaging The Customers » http://www.tradedot.com/2007/11/19/private-label-b2b/#comment-139 Marketing, Technology, and Entrepreneurial Experience - Blog by Tradedot » Blog Archive Engaging The Customers » Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:13:51 +0000 http://www.tradedot.com/2007/11/19/private-label-b2b/#comment-139 [...] « Private Label B2B [...] […] « Private Label B2B […]

]]> By: Paul Woodward http://www.tradedot.com/2007/11/19/private-label-b2b/#comment-128 Paul Woodward Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:29:24 +0000 http://www.tradedot.com/2007/11/19/private-label-b2b/#comment-128 Eddie - interesting post and the Taribaba.com site is amusing. However, I'd have to say that visitors from Silicon Valley have been missing the point on Asian B2B for years. They love to believe that technology can solve all our problems and, clever as they may be, are generally clueless about most businesses really work. Other than picking up a little bit of Google Adwords business, I don't see much relevance for these automatically generated and populated sites. They don't solve two key problems of Asian B2B: (i) revenue generation: to get real revenues out of this business still requires (and will for the foreseeable future in my opinion) f2f selling or, at the very least, direct sales by telephone. That's why the big business out there right now (Ali vs. Global Sources) is a battle of the sales forces, not technology. You're right, the tech is simple and that's what the market needs. (ii) the elephant in the room that people have only just begun to acknowledge is quality and the need for verfication of the 1,000s of SME suppliers. There are clever technical discussions of this but not which solve the problem or provide an alternative to personal contact. Like you, however, I remain amazed that the big trade fair companies are making such poor use of even the limited technology they need to master. I don't think the $150 Alibaba clone is too relevant but capturing marketing $$ online as well as offline surely can't be that hard if companies organise themselves around the challenge. Eddie - interesting post and the Taribaba.com site is amusing. However, I’d have to say that visitors from Silicon Valley have been missing the point on Asian B2B for years. They love to believe that technology can solve all our problems and, clever as they may be, are generally clueless about most businesses really work.

Other than picking up a little bit of Google Adwords business, I don’t see much relevance for these automatically generated and populated sites. They don’t solve two key problems of Asian B2B:

(i) revenue generation: to get real revenues out of this business still requires (and will for the foreseeable future in my opinion) f2f selling or, at the very least, direct sales by telephone. That’s why the big business out there right now (Ali vs. Global Sources) is a battle of the sales forces, not technology. You’re right, the tech is simple and that’s what the market needs.

(ii) the elephant in the room that people have only just begun to acknowledge is quality and the need for verfication of the 1,000s of SME suppliers. There are clever technical discussions of this but not which solve the problem or provide an alternative to personal contact.

Like you, however, I remain amazed that the big trade fair companies are making such poor use of even the limited technology they need to master. I don’t think the $150 Alibaba clone is too relevant but capturing marketing $$ online as well as offline surely can’t be that hard if companies organise themselves around the challenge.

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