Provi To Provide B2B eCommerce Market For NY Alcohol Industry

B2B eCommerce marketplace Provi, which provides services for the beverage alcohol industry, is rolling out a free online ordering solution for distributors in New York that will ease the process of B2B shopping, a Wednesday (June 16) press release said.

Provi will be partnering with Empire Merchants, Empire Merchants North, and Manhattan Beer — all distributors in the New York area — in the rollout.

This will allow customers to see more accurate pricing and ways to see discounts, thus allowing customers to budget. As a contactless platform, and users will be able to place orders “24/7” through Provi, the release noted.

According to the release, Provi’s services help to streamline the process of ordering for distributors, which often add around 50 to 100 products every year. Because of that, it can become difficult for retailers to keep on top of them for customer demands, and companies’ growths can be impeded by spending too long on working out orders.

Eric Pfeil, president and CEO at Empire, said the company was looking at new ways to push into the digital market. He said Empire’s responsibility was “to protect, enhance and optimize the community of retailers which we serve.”

Joe Minnix, director of eCommerce at Manhattan Beer, said he’d heard from customers who have been looking for on-demand self-service portals that let them look at various products for comparison and research. He said Provi would help Manhattan Beer add an on-demand online shopping service.

Retailers and companies working with alcoholic beverages have not been traditionally modernized in terms of putting procure-to-pay processes in place. PYMNTS reported that Provi Vice President of Product Ashley Phillips said the problem often comes from the complexity of the regulatory requirements. If not followed properly, fines can result.

Successful B2B payments come about in the alcohol industry, as they do in others, from trust, with sellers needing the assurance that their payments will come through and buyers having to trust that the transactions will be timely with the tech used.