B2B ecommerce — what it is and ten case study examples.

B2B ecommerce represents the central nervous system of a company's commercial operations — a strategic ecosystem that must deliver consumer-grade experiences while managing enterprise-level complexity. A fundamental change in buyer expectations drives this evolution.

B2B ecommerce must seamlessly integrate complex, customer-specific pricing tiers, manage intricate internal purchasing and approval workflows, display personalized product catalogs, and orchestrate multi-channel fulfillment across a global landscape. Failure to provide this level of sophisticated, intuitive self-service is no longer a minor inconvenience — it is a direct threat to customer retention and market share.

The technology that underpins this transformation is sophisticated B2B ecommerce software. The right software is more than a tool — it is a strategic partner in digital transformation, purpose-built to handle the unique complexities of B2B relationships. It provides the flexibility to adapt to changing market dynamics and the ability to transform operational challenges into lasting competitive advantages.

The following B2B ecommerce examples are not just success stories — they are a definitive collection of B2B ecommerce case studies that illustrate this new reality. They provide a blueprint for how leading companies across diverse industries — from heavy equipment rental to pharmaceutical manufacturing — are leveraging the power of Adobe Commerce to master complexity, drive measurable revenue, and build the future of digital business.

This post will cover:

• What is B2B ecommerce?
• 1. Steelcase: Mastering Complexity with 25 quadrillion SKUs.
• 2. Powering a Self-Service Revolution for Sunbelt Rentals.
• 3. SEE (Sealed Air): From Black Box to Transparent Buyer Portal.
• 4. Boehringer Ingelheim: Global Scale with Localized Precision in Animal Health.
• 5. FoodServiceDirect.com: Managing a 250,000-SKU Catalog with Headless Commerce.
• 6. ASUS: Transforming the B2B Reseller Channel with a Unified Platform.
• 7. Transcat: Digitizing Multiple Business Models on a Single Flexible Platform.
• 8. Pitney Bowes: Driving 198% ROI by Automating B2B Marketing.
• 9. Planning for the future with HP.
• 10. Accent Group: Taming a Multi-Brand Retail Empire.
• Key Takeaways for Your B2B Ecommerce Marketing Strategy.

What is B2B ecommerce?

Business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce is the sale of products between businesses, conducted on an online website. Products are displayed on a website, and orders can be placed with the business via an online portal. The seller then ships the items to the recipient's delivery address.

Advantages of B2B ecommerce.

Before you look at some B2B examples, it can be helpful to know what sort of advantages you’re on the lookout for. Some of the benefits of a B2B ecommerce operation include:

• Digital location: Your shop operates digitally through an ecommerce platform. There’s no requirement for a physical business space. You might need to consider warehouse storage for your stock, depending on your business operation.
• Profit margins: Shop floor. Warehouse. Staff hires. There’s no need for any of these expenses with an ecommerce store. Lower overhead increases the potential for higher profits, as you’ll retain a larger percentage of your sales totals.
• Scalability: B2B platforms are scalable. By adopting new technologies, such as cloud computing, you can expand accessibility globally, supercharging your business’s growth potential.
• Customer base: Likewise, as your B2B platform reaches a global audience, you can exponentially expand the size of your customer base, vastly increasing the likelihood of improved profits.
• Analytics: Integrating customer data software, such as an Order Management System, can enable you to track and store important customer data, which you can leverage to make informed, data-driven decisions in the future.

10 inspiring B2B ecommerce brand stories.

The success of your B2B ecommerce business relies not only on designing a great website and adding a few calls-to-action.

From choosing the right ecommerce platform to branding to showcasing your products, a lot of planning and strategy goes into creating an attractive and lucrative online store.

Study these 10 brands and see how they mastered the art of selling online, gained brand awareness, and even doubled their business revenue.

The challenge: For global office furniture leader Steelcase, the primary business challenge was one of staggering scale and complexity. The company operates through an extensive dealer network and offers a build-to-order product portfolio so customizable that a recent audit revealed more than 25 quadrillion possible SKUs. Their existing bespoke platform was struggling to cope with this complexity — unable to keep pace with the market or meet the sophisticated e-procurement needs of their largest customers, who account for nearly 90% of their B2B business.

The Adobe Commerce solution: Steelcase deployed a multi-faceted solution with Adobe Commerce at its core — designed to both manage back-end complexity while simplifying the front-end customer experience. The platform’s multi-site architecture serves as the foundation for thousands of customer-specific microsites across the Steelcase dealer network, each fully customizable with unique branding, product catalogs, and purchasing rules.

For its largest B2B clients, Steelcase implemented a seamless punch-out catalog integration. This critical B2B function enables customers to initiate their purchasing journey within their internal e-procurement systems, browse the user-friendly Steelcase web store, and have their shopping cart contents automatically transferred back to their system for internal approval and purchase order generation.

To manage its immense product catalog, Steelcase integrated Adobe Commerce directly with its specialized catalog builder system. This enables the management of two distinct catalogs: a detailed manufacturing catalog containing all technical specifications, and a user-friendly marketing catalog for customer websites. This dual-catalog approach allows customers to select options such as color, fabric, and arm style, and the system translates these simple choices into the complex manufacturing definitions required for fulfillment. A custom "chooser" feature further personalizes the experience by asking a series of questions to determine the correct dealer, billing information, and the exact portion of the catalog a customer is authorized to see, ensuring product and contract compliance down to the specific building level.

The results: The impact of this new digital commerce engine has been transformative. A remarkable 90% of Steelcase's B2B sales are now driven through these sophisticated online channels. The company has successfully simplified its product complexity, offering an intuitive and modern shopping experience where customers can easily configure and order highly customized products tailored to their specific needs. This demonstrates that true B2B ecommerce excellence requires solving two distinct challenges simultaneously: simplifying the customer-facing experience while robustly managing immense back-end operational complexity. The Adobe Commerce platform serves as a sophisticated bridge between these two worlds, embodying the essence of a world-class B2B solution

The challenge: Sunbelt Rentals, the second-largest equipment rental company in North America, operates in an industry traditionally built on relationships and direct sales. The company recognized that a new generation of B2B buyers expected digital self-service and that the industry's infancy in digital experiences presented a massive opportunity. The goal was clear: create an informative, easy-to-navigate commerce site where customers could research and reserve equipment anytime, anywhere — even from a mobile device on a busy construction site.

The Adobe Commerce solution: Sunbelt Rentals built a modern, multichannel experience by expanding its Adobe Experience Cloud footprint. Adobe Commerce handles everything from catalog storage to order and cart management. This was combined with the high-performance front-end of Adobe Experience Manager in a headless architecture, providing the agility to innovate quickly.

The most impactful part of the solution was the deep integration of their commerce platform with marketing automation. With the help of partner Perficient, Sunbelt Rentals connected Adobe Commerce to Adobe Marketo Engage, transforming their ecommerce site into a proactive marketing channel. This enabled sophisticated ecommerce marketing tactics, most notably the Abandoned Cart Nurture campaign. This automated program follows up with customers who add items to their cart but fail to complete the reservation. Leveraging data hygiene workflows, the system was able to personalize follow-up emails with inventory information tailored to the customer's specific geographic location, ensuring relevance and driving action.

The results: The results of this integrated strategy are quantifiable and powerful, demonstrating how a platform can become a revenue generator rather than just a cost center. The Abandoned Cart Nurture campaign doubled the conversion rate of abandoned carts, a success projected to contribute up to $2.4 million in additional revenue within a year. Beyond this direct revenue impact, the new platform accelerated their agility, enabling 6x more frequent site updates and reducing content creation timelines from weeks to mere hours.

Sunbelt's story fundamentally reframes the role of a B2B ecommerce platform. A basic system records an abandoned cart as a lost sale. Sunbelt's integrated system, however, interprets that same event as a valuable data signal—an opportunity for re-engagement. The commerce data (the customer's identity, their cart contents) is fed to the marketing automation engine, which executes a personalized, automated action to recover the sale.

The Challenge:  SEE, the company that invented BUBBLE WRAP® brand cushioning and is a global leader in packaging solutions, operated in a manufacturing sector that had lagged in digital customer experience. Customers traditionally placed complex orders over the phone and by email. Once an order was placed, it was entered into a "black box," with limited visibility into its status or shipment arrival. SEE's leadership sought to fundamentally change this dynamic by providing transparency and self-service capabilities.

The Adobe Commerce Solution: The centerpiece of SEE's digital transformation was the creation of a comprehensive B2B buyer portal, powered by Adobe Commerce. This portal was designed to be a one-stop shop for all customer needs. Within this new self-service environment, customers can now place and manage their orders, access their complete order history for easy reordering, and, crucially, receive real-time updates as their products are shipped.

A key feature addressing a common B2B pain point is the platform's ability to manage complex internal approval workflows. If a customer needs a manager's sign-off to place a large order, they can send it for review directly through the portal. Once approved, the order is automatically placed, and the customer receives real-time notifications on its progress. This digitizes and streamlines what was once a cumbersome, manual process. Adobe Commerce provided the robust capabilities needed to handle the nuanced freight policies and complex checkout requirements inherent in the manufacturing industry, creating a seamless experience for the end user.

The results: The adoption and impact of the buyer portal were dramatic and immediate. Today, a full 80% of orders can be placed entirely online through the portal. Even more tellingly, for customers who engaged with the portal, they quickly moved 83% or more of their total order volume to the online channel, demonstrating the portal's immense value and stickiness. The company has also successfully automated about 15% of the manual touches a typical order receives, driving significant operational efficiency.

In an industry like packaging, where products can be perceived as commodities, the digital customer experience itself becomes a powerful competitive differentiator. By building a superior buyer portal, SEE introduced a new and compelling axis of competition: ease of doing business. A customer who can seamlessly manage orders, track shipments, and handle internal approvals on the SEE portal is unlikely to switch to a competitor still reliant on phone calls and emails, even for a marginal price difference. The investment in the Adobe Commerce-powered portal was therefore not just about efficiency — it was a strategic investment in creating a high-switching-cost experience that fosters deep customer loyalty and retention.

The challenge: Boehringer Ingelheim, a global leader in pharmaceuticals, operates a significant animal health division that serves a wide and varied B2B customer base. The company needed an ecommerce solution that could scale globally while providing highly customized, localized experiences. Their previous small-scale solution was insufficient. A key challenge was tailoring the digital experience for different customer segments — such as veterinarians serving pets versus those serving livestock — and adhering to varying regulations in various countries. The goal was to deliver an efficient, self-service procurement process that displayed only the products buyers needed and were authorized to purchase.

The Adobe Commerce solution: To achieve this blend of global power and local agility, Boehringer Ingelheim chose Adobe Commerce. A critical element of their strategy was the use of headless-style storefronts. This architecture enables the company to rapidly change the front-end user experience of a website to meet specific customer or market requirements, all without affecting the stable, centralized back-end data infrastructure. This enables them to create tailored self-service environments where customers receive immediate, accurate solutions for their unique procurement needs, eliminating the need to contact customer service.

The platform's intuitive, template-based CMS enables the company to adapt the shopping environment to local market conditions with just a few clicks. This includes customizing shopping cart views, return conditions, and terms and conditions for each country-specific store instance on a modular basis. This flexibility is business-critical in the B2B animal health environment, ensuring a harmonious and efficient buying experience that is always tailored to the individual customer's needs.

The results: The implementation of Adobe Commerce delivered spectacular results, proving to be the ideal solution for tailoring content and delivering compelling online experiences. In the U.S. market, the share of online sales in the animal health segment increased tenfold, rocketing from just 3% of total sales in 2018 to 30% by 2020, and has since grown to approximately 35%. This dramatic channel shift not only met the demands of their B2B customers for efficient self-service but also had a positive impact on the company's trade margin. Boehringer Ingelheim's success demonstrates how a headless commerce strategy enables a global enterprise to act with the speed and precision of a local player, capturing significant market share by delivering a superior, personalized digital experience.

The challenge: FoodServiceDirect.com (FSD) was on a mission to modernize the food service industry, a sector that had been slow to adopt ecommerce. With a massive and ever-expanding catalog of over 250,000 SKUs, FSD served a diverse customer base, with B2B buyers accounting for 50%. The company planned an ambitious expansion that included a new B2B and B2C storefront, as well as a separate, dedicated B2B portal for a major food service franchisee chain. This secondary platform needed to enable franchisees to manage ordering across multiple locations from a single, seamless dashboard. The core challenge was finding a platform that could handle the immense product catalog while supporting these complex, distinct business models.

The Adobe Commerce solution: FSD’s technology leadership envisioned a solution built around an API-based, "headless" commerce model hosted in the cloud. They chose Adobe Commerce after a rigorous selection process that required nearly 200 specific features. The headless approach provided a flexible communication layer between the front-end experience and the back-end systems, which was crucial for several reasons. It eliminated creative constraints, allowing developers to quickly build customized front-end experiences for each webstore without being tied to a template. It also ensured that both stores could easily connect to FSD's existing business systems, like order management and product inventory.

The open architecture of Adobe Commerce allowed for easy customization of product detail pages and the creation of unique brand pages. The cloud-based solution also provided significant cost savings in hardware and support staff, while incorporating built-in features for security, performance, and monitoring from partners such as New Relic and Fastly. This headless foundation enhanced scalability and enabled the seamless integration of key third-party technologies, including Unbxd for search functionality and 1Worldsync for product data enrichment.

The Results: Since launching their new sites on Adobe Commerce, FSD has exceeded its business objectives. The company achieved a 40% increase in new customer acquisition, a 110% increase in repeat purchases, and, most critically for their strategy, a 40% growth in B2B sales. The headless architecture proved to be the strategic key that unlocked the flexibility and power FSD needed to manage its vast catalog and serve its complex B2B customer base effectively, positioning them as a digital leader in the food service distribution industry.

The Challenge: In Singapore, the regional business for technology giant ASUS relied heavily on its network of resellers operating out of retail stores. The company sought to enhance communication and streamline the process for tracking product purchases and distribution with these key partners. At the same time, ASUS sought to strengthen its brand and launch a direct-to-consumer (D2C) business, but it needed to do so without alienating its crucial reseller channel. The challenge was to build a single platform that could manage both a sophisticated B2C experience and a streamlined, supportive B2B ecommerce model for its partners.

The Adobe Commerce Solution: Partnering with SmartOSC, ASUS chose Adobe Commerce for its flexibility to deliver a robust, unified approach to B2C and B2B on a single site. For its B2B channel, the platform offered the perfect opportunity to simplify revenue distribution and strengthen reseller relationships. ASUS introduced a partner program where payments received through the new site were automatically distributed based on reseller product allocations. This was achieved by integrating the resellers' ERP systems with Adobe Commerce and using the PayPal Parallel Checkout extension, which automatically splits customer payments and directs the appropriate percentage to the fulfilling reseller.

This system transformed the B2B relationship from a potential point of conflict into a seamless partnership. Beyond payments, businesses interested in using ASUS products could partner with the company for exclusive industry discounts and unique selling terms reserved for B2B transactions. The platform also supported an employee purchase plan, incentivizing local businesses to outfit their operations with ASUS products.

The results: The launch of the unified ecommerce site on Adobe Commerce drove impressive results across the board. Compared to the previous year, ASUS saw a 56% increase in PC and mobile revenue, backed by a 59% growth in transactions. Web sessions jumped by over 32%. For the B2B channel, the new system dramatically simplified revenue distribution, which improved inventory tracking, reduced accounting overhead, and fostered more meaningful ties between the resellers and the Singapore office. By centralizing ordering and automating payments, ASUS enhanced its control over product movement while simultaneously strengthening its crucial distribution channel—a masterclass in using technology to solve complex channel dynamics.

The challenge: Transcat, a leading North American provider of calibration and compliance services, supports multiple industries with a diverse range of offerings. Their business was evolving, and they needed to digitize the core areas of their operation, which included not only the sales of new equipment but also equipment rentals and the sale of pre-owned equipment. Having enjoyed success on a previous version of the platform, they needed to upgrade to a solution that could elevate their customer experience and provide the agility to manage these distinct business models from a single, unified platform. The goal was to find a solution with the power and flexibility to serve multiple business types and needs.

The Adobe Commerce solution: After researching alternatives, Transcat chose to upgrade to Adobe Commerce, citing the "incredible value" for the enterprise capabilities it offers. The platform provided a unique ability to create differentiated customer experiences for various target segments and digitize a wide range of businesses—from new product sales to rentals to used goods—all within a single solution.

Working with their partner, Gorilla Group, Transcat executed an end-to-end digital transformation. They integrated key business systems, including their ERP, using custom-built middleware to ensure the real-time transfer of order, customer, and product data. A key innovation was the online integration of their rental business for the first time. The team built an integration to manage rental orders, with an API specifically designed to allow for dynamic updates directly within an order, making it easier than ever to rent specialized equipment. One of the most exciting new features was the Product Configurator, which enables users to build dynamic products on the fly, customizing equipment for their specific use case and generating dynamic SKUs that directly map to Transcat's ERP.

The results: The new Adobe Commerce platform enabled Transcat to successfully digitize its multiple business lines, creating a modern, full-featured experience for its customers. This digital transformation led to a 2.5-time increase in site registrations, indicating strong customer engagement with the new platform. Transcat's story highlights the critical importance of platform flexibility. In a world where businesses often operate multiple, distinct models, a rigid platform acts as a constraint, while a flexible platform like Adobe Commerce acts as a powerful business enabler.

The challenge: For over a century, Pitney Bowes has been a leader in business technology. However, over the years, the company had developed a complex network of homegrown systems and manual processes to manage its sales, which made it impossible to scale campaigns and respond to the rapid pace of modern digital customers. Data on contacts, leads, and campaigns resided in separate systems worldwide, resulting in slow analytics, unreliable reporting, and expensive, error-prone manual work. For example, manual IT processes resulted in about 30 reporting anomalies per day that required manual review.

The Adobe Commerce solution: Pitney Bowes invested in a suite of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to break down these operational silos and automate time-intensive processes. The first order of business was to replace manual IT work with an automated system for analytics and reporting. By combining Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Target, and Adobe Analytics, the company built a robust foundation for digital growth and sophisticated ecommerce marketing.

Adobe Experience Manager enabled faster content creation and more targeted delivery of digital assets, leading to more personalized services and increased online revenue. With Adobe Target, the marketing team established a robust "test and learn" program, running A/B and multivariate tests to optimize online experiences. This included identifying the optimal call-to-action language for a key product subscription, resulting in a 2% increase in conversion with statistical significance. All of this was made possible by Adobe Analytics, which enabled the company to analyze large volumes of data, uncover patterns in customer behavior, and deliver more personalized digital services.

The results: The business impact of this digital transformation was staggering. Just 18 months after deploying the Adobe solutions, Pitney Bowes saw a 198% return on investment. The company reduced its annual operating costs by more than $100,000, trimming IT spend through automation. The time required to create reports was reduced by 50%, and data anomalies decreased from 30 per day to just one per week, providing accurate and timely business intelligence to strategic decision-makers. This case study demonstrates that investing in an integrated commerce and marketing platform is not just about enhancing the front-end experience; it's about re-engineering the entire commercial operation for speed, efficiency, and data-driven decision-making, resulting in significant improvements to the bottom line.

The challenge: HP manufactures computers, workstations, and printers for both businesses and consumers.

When they decided to expand their Asia-Pacific division (and open five online stores), they realized they needed to work on a B2B ecommerce business plan that was future-ready but still had a local feel.

The Adobe Commerce solution: HP turned to Adobe Commerce for a platform that could support multiple stores globally. With the best-in-site navigation, design templates, and on-site security, Adobe Commerce was an obvious choice when it came to expanding their B2B ecommerce website.

Creating several new online stores in different regions presented its own set of challenges, particularly in terms of content, payment processing, and language translation.

The results: They built the right website for their company, the transition was seamless, and the payoff was significant.

The result was a more local feel for users online and a movement of 23% of users opting to purchase their products online as opposed to at an in-person store.

Read more about HP and its success with Adobe Commerce.

The challenge: Accent Group stands as a dominant force in Australia and New Zealand's performance lifestyle market, acting as a leading retailer and distributor for iconic global brands like Skechers, Dr. Martens, and Vans. The company's complexity is immense, operating over 750 physical stores and 39 distinct ecommerce websites. The core challenge was to manage this vast and diverse brand portfolio efficiently, keeping each brand's unique identity while streamlining back-end operations to stay ahead of fast-moving consumer trends.

The Adobe Commerce solution: To master this complexity, Accent Group adopted a global reference architecture (GRA) for a wide-scale implementation of Adobe Commerce. This strategic move was designed to create a unified, scalable foundation for its many web properties. The team re-launched the ecommerce sites for key brands like Platypus Shoes, introducing a suite of customer-centric features. These included improved size and fit guides, automatic product categorization with enriched attributes, and engaging video content widgets. The entire purchase pathway was re-engineered, culminating in a streamlined two-step checkout process designed to increase conversions.

The results: The adoption of the global reference architecture on Adobe Commerce has had a profound impact on the business, effectively doubling the company's operational efficiency. By standardizing the technology backbone, Accent Group can now roll out new features and manage its 39 websites with far greater speed and less overhead. The enhanced on-site features have led to deeper customer engagement, while the optimized checkout process directly translates to higher conversion rates, proving that a smart, scalable platform is the key to successfully managing a complex, multi-brand retail and distribution empire.

These b2b ecommerce case studies offer more than just inspiration; they provide a clear blueprint for success in the modern digital economy. The experiences of these diverse industry leaders distill into several core strategic takeaways that can inform any B2B organization's approach to digital commerce and marketing.

1. Complexity is the B2B default — simplicity is the winning experience: The stories of Steelcase and SEE are powerful reminders that the best B2B ecommerce software excels at hiding immense operational complexity behind a clean, simple, and intuitive user interface. B2B buyers do not want to navigate your internal complexities; they want an easy path to purchase. Your marketing and user experience design should relentlessly focus on delivering this simplicity.
2. Your platform is your best marketing channel: As proven by the remarkable success of Sunbelt Rentals and Pitney Bowes, the most significant marketing ROI is often found by leveraging the data generated within your own commerce platform. An abandoned cart, a repeat purchase, or a product view are all valuable data signals. The platform is not just where you transact — it is where you learn about your customers and engage them with personalized, automated campaigns that drive real revenue.
3. Flexibility is non-negotiable: The B2B ecommerce examples of Transcat and ASUS demonstrate that modern businesses rarely fit into a single, neat box. They operate multiple models simultaneously — direct sales, rentals, B2C, and B2B reseller channels. A rigid platform becomes a business constraint that stifles innovation and growth. A flexible, extensible platform like Adobe Commerce becomes a strategic business enabler, providing the foundation to pursue new opportunities as they arise.
4. Headless architecture is a strategic enabler for agility: The success of global enterprises like Boehringer Ingelheim and nimble innovators like FoodServiceDirect.com shows that a headless architecture is far more than a technical buzzword. It is the key to achieving rapid, market-specific innovation at the front end — where customer experience resides — without disrupting the stability and integrity of your core back-end commerce engine. This separation of concerns enables businesses to be both stable and agile.

These B2B ecommerce case studies are a testament to what is possible when strategic ambition is paired with the right foundational technology. They demonstrate how companies can master complexity, transform their platforms into revenue engines, and create digital experiences that become their most enduring competitive advantage.

If you're ready to move from inspiration to action, it's time to explore what Adobe Commerce can do for your business.