E-Business Breakfast: When B2Bs Blow Up

What makes one B2B marketplace survive and another go belly-up? And are there any clairvoyants looking for a consulting gig?

Case in point: Packexpo.com, a Fairfax, Va.-based exchange for the packaging industry, said this week it has raised an additional $7.5 million in capital. The financial aid comes from the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute, Mid-Atlantic Venture Funds, Hickory Venture Group and several packaging companies. Sellers on the site pay up to $10,000 per year to have their products featured here.

On the other hand, PackagingInsider.com quietly shut its doors late last month. The first marketplace powered by TechTrader, based here, it went live midyear.

Get details on TechTrader's strategy here. Insiders say the company hasn't had the smoothest road in 2000 -- and who has? -- but it continues to win new clients.

Madison, Wis.-based Berbee is an e-business solutions provider with a feather in its Santa cap.

E-commerce analysis group Gomez.com said that two of Berbee's marquee customers, Landsend.com and Woolrich.com, rank No. 3 and No. 11, respectively, in a new survey measuring performance of e-commerce clothing sites.

In Gomez.com's report ranking top Internet apparel stores for Fall 2000, Woolrich came in fourth and Lands' End second in customer confidence, a Gomez category that measures retailers' ability to run reliable online and phone-based customer-service operations and Web sites.

Gomez also cited Landsend.com's innovation in offering body scanning, where customers' exact body measurements are gathered by mobile units traveling the United States, then uploaded to the site to let people "try on" clothes with precise-fit data.

Commerce One and NetVendor this week inked a deal designed to help suppliers connect to B2B marketplaces.

NetVendor, an Internet Capital Group company, is now an official Commerce One ISV, with a particular focus on developing applications for online direct-materials procurement.

The companies intend to jointly market and sell their complementary products. Initially, the automotive, aerospace and electronics industries will be the main vertical markets targeted.

For details about NetVendor's products, click here.

Lastly, from the Department of Successful Avoidance of Channel Conflict: Many of us might remember Quisp -- on the breakfast tables of our youth -- but have you tried to find it lately at the grocery store? While your efforts to locate the stuff were probably unsuccessful, take heart; Quisp's parent company, Quaker Oats, has created a Quisp Web site where fans can buy the cereal.

Sources close to Quaker say that grocery stores don't mind Quaker's Quisp initiative since they sell far more instant oatmeal than they do Quisp. The E-Business Breakfast contacted the good folks at here. to find out just how many boxes of cereal these guys sell each month; at press time, we were still awaiting an answer.

That's your E-Business Breakfast for Wednesday. Know a vendor you think should be singled out for superior efforts to avoid channel conflict? Or, conversely, for downright crummy efforts? E-mail me at arogers@cmp.com.