Recently because of Alibaba IPO, the B2B business model has grabbed a lot of attentions in Hong Kong. I was asked by many people about how B2B works, what is the value proposition, future prospect, etc, etc, etc.

Of course for some of us, the Internet B2B business isn’t a new thing. The practice has been very mature. At the same time we must also admit that, many people don’t have a clue about how Internet B2B works and they see the model in an over simplified way.

But I can tell you these people who don’t have clue about how Internet B2B works are not the no-brainer IPO day traders. Many of them are highly educated senior business executives. We can’t blame their ignorance. In fact, the key players such as Alibaba or Global Sources might have to look back and revisit what actually have been offering in the market, and why these services are seen as something “simple.”

There are many proven B2B models in the market other than Alibaba and Global Sources. These first movers have been existed in the market for over 10 or even 20 years. Here I want to mention a couple of them which you may know or may not know:

Thomas Register is one of the oldest B2B businesses in the world. It was introduced to me by Jan Duffy King in 2004, the man who was the much sought after Internet expert in America. Jan helped Thomas Register to launch Thomas B2B, an online counterpart of Thomas Register, and then the business was later evolved into Thomas Global. They co-sponsored the first Internet B2B market study with Google few years ago in US. Thomas Global is now a full-option B2B web solution company.

Rawmart, founded by the Noble Group, is the pioneer B2B e-marketplace based in Hong Kong. I met Rawmart in 2001 and by that time they had been providing sourcing, procurement, and fulfillment services for buyers and suppliers over the Internet. Here is a Noble Group’s promo clip. It tells the business proposition and is pretty self-explanatory.

eBay. Yes, eBay is a B2B company. Meet eBay B2B establishment, eBaybusiness.com. It has been in the market for years. They emphasize on a couple of industrial verticals, provide both buyers and suppliers solutions. A number of eBay technologies such as the famous storefront are integrated and presented as viable business solution. Quite neat.

WGSN is an authoritative trend portal. Currently owned by the Emap, a renowned B2B media group in UK. WGSN specializes in fashion, textile, fabric technical, a.k.a. Style Industry. It is a subscription-based B2B business. The annual subscription fee for WGSN costs you US@25,000 up.

All these B2B companies are the market first movers and have brought innovation into proven business model. They share many similarities with today headline-news B2B companies, but highly differentiated in the service deliveries. They deserve to be mentioned in my blog so that I can tell everyone, the B2B business model can be “not simple.”

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