Industry edition · Website and E-commerce
B2B e-commerce for distributors: PIM, ERP and punchout before the storefront
Census data for 2022, the latest year with product-line detail, shows 28.6% of distributor sales arriving electronically. We checked five distributor websites on Oct. 26, 2026 to see what separates a web store that takes orders from one that only shows a catalog.
A distributor’s web store takes real orders when three things are true before launch. The customer sees their own price, the customer sees stock they can trust, and the product data is clean enough that a buyer can find a part by the number already on their screen. Get those right in the ERP and the product information system first. Then build the storefront, and for your largest accounts, plan on punchout into their procurement system before you worry about the homepage.
The order matters because B2B e-commerce for distributors is already a large channel, measured the way the Census Bureau measures it. In 2022, US merchant wholesalers other than manufacturers’ own sales branches booked $2.30 trillion in e-commerce sales out of $8.06 trillion total, or 28.6%, according to the Annual Wholesale Trade Survey. No newer figure with this breakdown exists, because the survey was folded into the Annual Integrated Economic Survey, and no later year of wholesale e-commerce by product line had been published as of October 2026. Census counts a sale as e-commerce when the order is placed, or its price and terms are negotiated, over the internet, an extranet, an EDI network, email or another online system (E-Stats methodology), so EDI and procurement connections are in that number and a web cart is only one of the doors.
How big is B2B e-commerce for distributors already?
The chart at the top of this piece gives the 2022 shares for the durable-goods lines closest to industrial distribution. They cover merchant wholesalers excluding manufacturers’ sales branches and offices, and the shares are our calculation from Census’s e-commerce sales table and total sales table. Manufacturers’ own sales branches run well above these lines, and our guide to e-commerce for manufacturers covers that side of the channel.
Machinery, equipment and supplies distributors, the MRO and industrial supply group, sit at 14.3%, half the all-wholesaler average. Their share was 15.6% in 2020 and 15.1% in 2021, so it has not climbed since 2020. Electrical distributors, at 34.3%, run more than twice the machinery group’s share.
Census attaches a caution to the all-wholesaler e-commerce totals. Response rates for those estimates were 40.4% and 37.3% in 2022, and Census tells data users to “use caution when drawing conclusions” from them. Treat every share here as an estimate. The gaps between product lines are wide enough to hold up under that caution; a move of a point or so from one year to the next may not.
What has to be true in the ERP before the web store goes live?
The storefront is the easy part. The data that decides whether it takes orders lives in the ERP, and four things need to be settled before anyone picks a platform.
Customer-specific pricing comes first. Industrial buyers rarely pay list. If the web store cannot show a logged-in buyer the same net price their inside rep would quote, the buyer calls the rep, and the store becomes a lookup tool. Price matrices, contract pricing and cost-plus rules have to sit in the ERP in a form the site can read in real time.
Availability by location is second. A buyer who needs a part today wants to know whether the branch ten miles away has it. That requires on-hand counts by branch exposed to the site, plus a decision about how much to show anonymous visitors.
Third is the ship-to and approval structure. Plants have multiple ship-to addresses, buyers with spending limits and approvers. If the ERP account structure is a single bill-to with a free-text ship-to field, the web store will be too.
Fourth is order history a buyer can use. Reorders are the easiest web orders to win, so a buyer’s past purchases, in their own part numbers where you carry cross-references, have to come through. The same ERP history drives the sales side too; our guide to CRM for distributors sets out the three reports to build from it.
Where does PIM fit for a distributor?
A product information management system holds the attributes, images, documents and cross-references that an ERP was never built to store. In many distributor ERPs the item record is a short description, a price and a cost, which is not enough for a buyer searching by specification.
To test yours, pick 50 of your best-selling SKUs. For each one, can a buyer filter to it by the attributes an engineer would use (thread size, voltage, material, pressure rating), see a real image, open the spec sheet, and find it by the manufacturer part number or a competitor’s number? If fewer than 40 pass, fix product data before you spend on storefront features, because search on a distributor site depends on the attributes underneath it.
- A buyer can filter to it by the attributes an engineer would use (thread size, voltage, material, pressure rating)
- It has a real image
- Its spec sheet opens
- It can be found by the manufacturer part number
- It can be found by a competitor's part number
Run this on your 50 best sellers before you pick a platform. If fewer than 40 of 50 pass, fix product data before storefront features. Source: Our position.
What five distributor sites show today
We visited five distributor websites on Oct. 26, 2026, logged out, as a new buyer would. We checked whether prices and stock show before login, whether a quick order tool is visible, and what each says publicly about punchout and EDI. “Not visible logged out” means we did not see it; the feature may exist behind the login.
| Distributor | Price shown logged out | Stock shown logged out | Quick order | Punchout or EDI stated publicly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PTSolutions (metalworking and MRO) | List price | On-hand count, with pickup store selector | Quick Order Pad: line entry, paste, file upload | Punch-out and contract pricing |
| Kimball Midwest (MRO) | No, login required | No | Quick Order pad (per its storefront FAQ) | Not found on public pages |
| Kirby Risk (electrical, Indiana) | Yes, with “Login to See Your Pricing” | Delivery and distribution center availability, pickup branch selector | Not visible logged out | Not found on public pages |
| Mayer Electric (electrical, Alabama) | Yes | Count shown; full inventory after login | Not visible logged out | Not found on public pages |
| Border States (electrical and industrial) | Product listings did not load logged out | Product listings did not load logged out | Quick Order and Reorder Items in the site menu | EDI and procurement system integration |
PTSolutions shows a list price and an on-hand count on the product page, and its Quick Order Pad takes line-by-line entry, copy and paste, or a CSV or XLS upload. Its Procurement Solutions page names contract pricing, punch-out and real-time inventory as separate features, which is the right checklist.
Kimball Midwest takes the opposite stance on price. Its storefront FAQ says pricing is visible “as long as you’re logged in,” and that an item showing as unpriced should go to the customer’s sales rep. The policy fits a rep-driven model. The same FAQ describes an Order Approval feature for buyers who need sign-off and says there is no limit on users per account.
Kirby Risk shows a price to anonymous visitors with a “Login to See Your Pricing” prompt, and splits availability between delivery and a named distribution center, with a pickup branch selector. Mayer Electric shows a price and an available count, then tells registered users to “Log in to see all Mayer inventory availability.”
Border States puts Quick Order, Reorder Items, Quotes, Proof of Delivery and Mill Test Reports in its site menu, and its back-office services page offers electronic data interchange and procurement system integration alongside “real-time pricing, product availability and online order management.”
Across the five, the account features carry the weight. Quick order, reorder, approvals, invoices, proof of delivery and test reports are what a plant buyer logs in for.
Is punchout worth it before the public storefront?
For a distributor whose top accounts are larger manufacturers, often yes. Punchout lets a buyer open your catalog from inside their procurement system, fill a cart at their contract prices, and send it back into their own approval workflow. Many punchout connections run on cXML, whose current version is 1.2.071, last updated Aug. 14, 2026, according to the cXML.org home page, which calls punchout “the widely-used PunchOut feature.”
The argument for doing it first is concentration. If your top 20 accounts are a large share of revenue and several of them run Ariba or Coupa, a punchout connection puts you inside the tool their buyers already use every day, while a public storefront has to earn a new habit.
The work is mostly the same data work. Punchout needs contract pricing by account and clean item data, so a distributor that builds punchout first has done most of what the storefront needs.
What should a distributor’s marketing team do first?
- Pull your own e-commerce share. Count last year’s orders by channel: EDI, punchout, web, email, phone, counter. Compare it with the Census share for your line above.
- Run the 50-SKU product data test. Score attributes, images, documents and cross-references. The score is your PIM business case. Some manufacturers’ co-op and market development funds count content and photography as eligible, so ask your top lines before you pay for all of it.
- Decide your logged-out policy on price and stock. PTSolutions and Kimball Midwest made opposite choices. Pick one, write down why, and make the site consistent.
- List your top 25 accounts by procurement system. Ask sales which use Ariba, Coupa, Jaggaer or an ERP purchasing module. The list sets your punchout order.
- Build the account features before the homepage. Reorder, quick order with file upload, approvals, invoices and proof of delivery bring the logged-in buyer back.
- Put the web store in the sales comp plan. If outside reps lose credit when their accounts order online, they will steer buyers back to the phone. Our piece on inside vs outside sales at distributors covers how to split credit.
Sources
- Annual Wholesale Trade Survey, 2022 annual reports (Census Bureau)
- AWTS Table 2: Estimated E-Commerce Sales of U.S. Merchant Wholesalers, 1998 through 2022 (XLSX)
- AWTS Table 1: Estimated Sales of U.S. Merchant Wholesalers, 1992 through 2022 (XLSX)
- E-Stats methodology (Census Bureau)
- About the Annual Wholesale Trade Survey (Census Bureau)
- cXML.org home page
- PTSolutions product page
- PTSolutions Quick Order Pad
- PTSolutions Procurement Solutions
- Kimball Midwest Storefront FAQ
- Kirby Risk rigid conduit category page
- Mayer Electric search results page
- Border States homepage
- Border States back office and finances services
See an error? Email editor@planttopipeline.com with what is wrong. We fix errors and log them on the corrections page.
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