An interview with our #2 B2B Marketplace, JOOR!
JOOR, a platform that connects brands and retailers globally to deliver seamless digital wholesale management, ranked in the number 2 spot on Applico's B2B Top 50 ranking. We sat down with JOOR CEO Kristin Savilia to discuss JOOR's rollout of payments functionality, marketplace trends to watch in 2023, and the SaaS to marketplace trend in B2B.
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Discussed in this interview:
BNPL for B2B -
Kristin Savilia (17:50): Everyone's doing the buy now pay later on the consumer side and we actually initially approached all the people you could think of right now who are very successful on consumer buy now pay later, and couldn't get anybody to help us because our average transaction is $5000. You're telling me you're going to give my client $100 over three months was not going to help. We ended up doing a trial with one person, but it wasn't really a B2B company, it was Stripe, which gave us a hint and a taste of, "Hey, there's something here." But we quickly realized after about a year of learning, that it wasn't going to be the solution, and that actually we were going to have to build the darn thing, because nobody was really doing it the way we needed to.
The SaaS to marketplace trend -
Alex Moazed (14:16): It's a trend we actually see somewhat broadly in the overall ranking, is this theme of SaaS to marketplace, where you were able to solve these challenges with technology for one, or possibly both sides of the market, just by providing a great tool and software capability to solve their problem, and then marketplace came after. We're seeing that in more and more places, I feel like, across the spectrum of B2B, which is a pretty interesting dynamic and a difficult shift. It's interesting, you're saying getting those SaaS products, relationships, and value prop really nailed was maybe harder? Is that what you were saying?
Kristin Savilia: I found it harder and it just built this stickiness. It just took us a long time. JOOR's been around 13 years and we've spent most of our years building up that enablement, we call it. The relationship, the integrations, and getting them to utilize our tools at a really high engagement. Marketplace came later and because we already had two engaged audiences, it was a lot easier. Whereas if you're starting from scratch on just a marketplace, just the expense alone in getting the connections made, we haven't really had to do that because we did it earlier in a different way.
On the resurgence of wholesale -
Kristin Savilia (39:46): I just would say if you're a brand or a retailer listening, and you haven't made that step to digitize wholesale yet, please do so. Also, I think one other thing I'd mention is that we did publish an industry trends report last week and wholesale is coming back. Any DTC business that is looking for other distribution methods, this is the least expensive, so consider it. When All Birds go to wholesale like they are, I think it really shows that any DTC brand can do that, and should be doing that. Don't ever limit your distribution to one mechanism. If you're wholesale only, do some DTC. I'm talking both sides of this now, but really vary your distribution.
Alex Moazed: Yeah, I'm sure there's a bunch of DTC brands that haven't even ventured into wholesale waters.
Kristin Savilia: And really there's a digital version of that, which is a marketplace, but department stores are marketplaces, they're just physical ones. Don't shut down on that idea either. We're seeing a lot of GMV come through still for our department store friends, like we are for the small guys as well.
Alex Moazed: And they're investing heavily in e-commerce, right? They also are buying for both, right? That buying is both for their website and in-store?
Kristin Savilia: Correct.
Embedded payments and net 60 terms -
Kristin Savilia (18:54): The conundrum that you need to solve is, I'm a brand and I want you to pay me immediately. On the other side, I'm a retailer and I don't want to pay you until I get the goods on my selling floor, and sell them. JOOR Pay solves this in a couple of ways. First and foremost, embedded payments. Everything's in the platform including invoicing, we also have an external link that you can put into any invoice like you'd expect, and you can run everything through a singular platform which is JOOR Pay, built in is our typical functionality like follow-up messaging and easier collections, because it's all embedded. PCI compliant, so credit cards are held and retained on the platform, but the second thing that we do that's super exciting, is that we're offering Net 60 terms. This is at no cost to the retailer and there is a cost to the brand, but much less than factoring would be for them. If I'm the brand and I'm using JOOR Pay, Net 60 terms are automatically included.
Full video interview:
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