Retail B2B site ideas

We've been tasked with coming up with a trade facing version of a site for a cosmetics company who we already manage a B2C e-commerce operation for.

Obvious things we're already starting with are:
-Making the ordering process easier for a trade customer,
-Trade discounts integrated with the rest of the catalogue for recognised users
-A few changes to the catalogue to help order POS material or trade sheets
-Various promotional activity to the smaller clients who don't always get their attention at busy periods

Are there any bright ideas out there that would make a trade buyer drool? What makes them tick? I'd get on the phone to some but I don't know any personally!

A lot depends on how tight the integration between the web site and the backend systems is. I would expect to see, as a minimum :

1) Buyer ID by username / password
2) Multiple buyers per account
3) Unique catalogue by buyer / account
4) Unique pricing by buyer / account (where applicable; not everyone has multilevel discount structures and one off deals for big customers to support)
5) Delivery address populated by default on order (where appropriate - if you are buying for delivery to site, for instance, that's not very useful)
6) Purchasing on account; current credit account status report (24 hrs max lag); pay by c/c if credit account is over limit, on stop etc
7) View previous sales history (months data minimum)
8) See current orders pending status (all outstanding, incuding part delivered)
9) Stock quantities, if applicable

Would be nice :

1) Account / buyer creation on the fly (may require internal approval)
2) Online deal making ("I'll buy 100 cases if you do me 10% off now")
3) Recurring periodic orders (order 100 widgets on the 3rd of every month, no matter what)
4) Online returns; auto returns number generation, consistent with "standard" returns number series
5) Estimated delivery time, where appropriate
6) Different language / currency per BUYER (not account)
7) View all txns in any supported currency / language

For the specific scenario of the cosmetics company, I assume you need to trap bottle / top / covering / materials / colours etc. Only presenting VALID options (ie bottle body A only fits tops 1,3,4,5, and 9, so they are the only ones presented as options. Also doesnt come in "glitter" clolours, so not offered as options) would be good when assembling product ordering specs.

In a B2B scenario, very long (multiple '000's of line items) orders are not uncommon, so processing time for the "invoice" screen can be an issue. Inefficient database query technique can make the difference between on order taking minutes or hours to execute.

If the concern is big enough, you may need to give consideration to supply chain issues, ie you get an order for 3 million units, the bodies come from an external supplier, so you take that order, repackage it as an XML squirt, and place orders for components / consumables with your suppliers instantly on reciept of a valid customer purchase order. That can cut a day or 2 out of your lead time

Speed of update for new / superceded lines is an issue to, give consideration to line item churn rate (applies to pricing too), to decide whether you need a real-time or near real-time solution, or if a scheduled update routine will do

Nice b2b site ideas.