Running your own marketplace lets a manufacturer or distributor broaden its catalog well beyond what it manufactures or stocks itself, since other sellers can list complementary products under the same storefront. Master B2B’s webcast debate on the topic weighed that upside, broader selection and stronger channel enablement, against the real cost and complexity of operating a multi-seller platform: onboarding sellers, managing marketplace-wide trust and fulfillment standards, and deciding how much control to give up over the buying experience. The decision tends to hinge on scale. A marketplace model rewards companies with enough catalog breadth and buyer traffic to make the operational investment worthwhile; for smaller or narrower catalogs, a traditional single-seller storefront usually remains the better fit.
B2B marketplace model
A platform, either owned by a manufacturer or distributor, or run by a third party like Amazon Business, that lets multiple sellers list products for business buyers in one place.