B2B Builders Club: A New Hub for Leaders Modernizing Complex Commerce

Building a modern B2B commerce practice that mirrors how a business truly operates is rarely straightforward. Manufacturers coordinating dealer networks, distributors managing regional pricing, and enterprises selling through resellers and franchise partners all face layered complexities. Contract pricing, multi-tier account hierarchies, and legacy systems never designed to interoperate are common hurdles in serious B2B environments. When technology fails to align with actual business workflows, friction emerges—manifesting in manual ordering, fragmented reporting, and sluggish digital adoption.

To address this challenge, B2B Builders Club launches August 17. Created by VTEX, this commerce leadership community is designed for digital, sales, marketing, procurement, finance, and technology leaders who are modernizing complex B2B operations to meet the real needs of their organizations.

A community centered on real-world B2B decisions

B2B Builders Club offers commerce leaders a dedicated space to compare notes with peers tackling similar architecture questions, hear unscripted conversations among industry experts, and receive a weekly update on the field's evolving direction. Membership benefits include quarterly think-tank webinars, a recurring video series called Commerce Conversations, a weekly industry newsletter, and in-person gatherings focused on collaborative problem-solving.

Inaugural topic: "Sales reps are hunters, not order takers"

The Club's first Commerce Conversation directly addresses the sales representative dilemma. Host Emeka Nwosu, who leads VTEX's B2B practice, presents a deliberately provocative thesis to guest Howard Blumenthal, founder of Blumenthal Commerce: representatives should earn full commission when a customer places an order online, even if the rep never directly handled that order, because the relationship they cultivated is the reason the order exists. This debate mirrors discussions occurring across sales-driven B2B organizations, and both participants engage candidly without mincing words.

The dialogue extends beyond compensation. Blumenthal and Nwosu explore how representatives can allocate their time once routine reorders shift to self-service—focusing on whitespace hunting, win-back strategies, and wallet-share expansion—and how buying-pattern signals can transform intuition into actionable plans. They also examine the cultural challenge: how to encourage a 25-year veteran representative, whose professional identity hinges on being the primary customer contact, to embrace a buyer portal rather than quietly circumventing it. The conversation further tackles the AI question, urging organizations to honestly evaluate their readiness for such technology.

Continued dialogue at an invite-only retreat in Kohler, Wisconsin

In October, an invitation-only cohort of 25 B2B Builders Club members will convene for a two-day working retreat in Kohler, Wisconsin. Participants will be joined by the Club's advisory council to address architecture decisions that cannot be resolved through webinar chat windows, laying the groundwork for the collaborative foundation on which the Club is built.

How to join

B2B Builders Club is open to digital, sales, marketing, procurement, finance, and technology leaders at manufacturers, distributors, or any B2B organization dealing with complex pricing, multi-tier accounts, and channel partnerships. Membership includes access to Commerce Conversations, quarterly webinars, the weekly newsletter, community gatherings, and eligibility for invitation-only events such as the October retreat in Kohler.