We just returned from the annual eBay Enterprise/Magento conference, Magento Imagine 2015. Many thanks to our friends at Magento for putting on a great conference… the content was excellent and the production was superb! There were something like 2,500 people attending and it was a great mix of merchants, developers, solution partners and technology partners. I was VERY happy to see that the break-out tracks were predominately focused on business topics (B2B eCommerce trends, marketing, merchandizing, growing revenue, increasing profit, etc.). Yes, there was plenty of meaty stuff for the technical folks, but it was nice to see that eBay Enterprise understands the outcome their customers are trying to achieve and recognizes that commerce is about way more than the technology platform. That’s refreshing for a software company!
There’s lots to report on, but the big take-away for me was the massive opportunity that B2B sellers have with online sales to increase revenue and create loyalty with business buyers. Most of you who are selling to business customers (versus consumers) have just scratched the surface of what’s possible. Because Blue Fish is already focused on B2B commerce, I have recently been reading with great interest about the growth of this space and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for B2B companies. But at Imagine, I heard first hand from several people just how real this is. eBay Enterprise/Magento described how they are investing heavily in B2B functionality and that we will start to see a lot of emphasis from them in the coming months, in terms of marketing and feature info about Magento v2. Clearly they see an opportunity in B2B.
