Business-to-business (B2B) transactions and trade are leading indicators of what consumers are about find on store shelves and in day-to-day lives on main streets.

As one of the world’s largest B2B ecommerce marketplaces connecting business buyers and sellers from around the world, Alibaba.com is in a good position to offer insights into what is happening in the B2B world, and therefore what we might expect to see on shelves in upcoming months.

We’re launching a monthly insight series — the Alibaba.com B2B Pulse, which will include a summary of news and trends that impact US small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and companies in B2B.

The monthly report will cover macro trends affecting US SMBs — from supply chain disruptions to skilled labor shortage — along with the changes in trading patterns we see on the Alibaba.com platform and which categories are seeing the most growth amongst US businesses year over year.

According to internal Alibaba.com data, there’s a strong positive correlation (correlation coefficient of 0.91) between US B2B demand on Alibaba.com and lagged B2C ecommerce activity in the US. Meaning, when there’s an increase in B2B demand on Alibaba.com for a particular category of products, we may see a similar increase reflected in the next few months’ B2C ecommerce sales.

According to Statista, the yoga apparel market was valued at around US $32.6 billion worldwide in 2019. This figure is expected to increase by 28.8% to approximately US $42 billion by 2025. As a B2B platform, we saw this coming. Back in March of 2020, we saw a 120% increase in wholesale demand for yoga wear on our platform. (We also saw the demand for the personal protective equipment (PPE) category surge by approximately seven fold between January and April, in the very early stages of COVID-19.)

To find out more about top-of-mind trends concerning US SMBs along with the demand trends we see on Alibaba.com, check out the monthly Alibaba.com B2B Pulse reports to gauge what is to come in retail, economic, and social activities in the upcoming months.

This week's #B2BTuesday Tip:

If you want to grow as a B2B business, you need data. You need to understand what products are selling, who your customers are, what their purchasing behavior looks like, and more. Tools like Google Analytics and HubSpot can help you compile this data and get a holistic view of your business — allowing you to generate more leads and grow.