B2B Online Chicago brought together manufacturers, distributors, and technology leaders for three days of sessions, roundtables, and conversations that cut closer to the operational reality of B2B commerce than most industry events manage. For Zaelab, it was a productive week, and a useful one for understanding where enterprise buyers actually are in their thinking right now.
The themes that surfaced were specific: B2B portals, punchout integrations, data enrichment for AI, and the persistent question of whether Shopify belongs in enterprise B2B. The companies asking those questions were not exploring at an early stage. Several of them had already been through a failed implementation and were back in Chicago looking for a partner they could trust this time.
B2B Portals and the Buyer Experience Gap
The most consistent topic across sessions and booth conversations was the B2B portal — specifically, the gap between what buyers expect from a self-service experience and what most companies are currently delivering.
Buyers today bring consumer-grade expectations into their professional purchasing. They want account visibility, order history, contract pricing, and reorder functionality without picking up the phone. Most B2B organizations know this. The harder question — one that came up repeatedly — is how to deliver that experience without rearchitecting the entire commerce stack.
PortulGo™ drew sustained attention at the Zaelab booth throughout the event. The live demos brought back multiple visitors for longer follow-up conversations, because the product addresses bottlenecks that attendees recognized immediately from their own operations. When a tool solves a problem an audience is actively living with, the demo does not need much explanation.
"The best part of B2B Online is talking with customers directly about the problems they're actually facing. It's a reminder of who we're here to serve, and that our job is to bring the technology and solutions to the customer, not build it first and go find a customer to fit it."
Aaron Brill, Director, Technology Solutions, Zaelab
Shopify in Enterprise B2B: Moving Past the Myth
A recurring conversation at the event was whether Shopify is a credible platform for enterprise B2B — and what it takes to make it work. That question is not new, but the answers are getting more specific as more manufacturers and distributors move into implementation rather than evaluation.
The Mastermind Roundtable — Shopify Is Enterprise B2B Ready: Prove Me Wrong — hosted by Aaron Brill and Jared Shaner on May 4 gave attendees an open forum to push back, pressure-test assumptions, and walk away with a clearer picture of where Shopify genuinely fits.
Jared's speaking session, "Your New Platform Won't Save You: Why B2B Commerce Fails at the Org Chart, Not the Tech Stack," addressed something most replatforming conversations avoid. Technology is rarely the reason implementations fail. The session stood out for the audience because it named a problem they had either lived through or were actively managing.
B2B punchout was another topic that surfaced more than expected — a use case sitting at the intersection of buyer workflow, ERP integration, and commerce architecture. The complexity is real, and organizations navigating it for the first time appreciated the depth of the conversation. Shop Pay Commerce Components also came up as an area worth exploring for streamlining checkout experiences within B2B contexts.
What the Audience Was Actually Worried About
Two things were visible in how attendees approached conversations at the Zaelab booth this year.
First, data enrichment for AI. Many organizations have started AI initiatives and hit the same ceiling: the data AI needs to perform reliably is spread across systems, inconsistently formatted, and not accessible where it needs to be. The interest in data enrichment tools came from teams that had already tried to move and stalled.
Second, implementation risk. A significant number of companies at B2B Online Chicago had been through a failed implementation and were back in Chicago with a narrower set of questions and a lower tolerance for vague answers. The conversations that landed were grounded in specifics — what went wrong the first time, what the org chart looked like when it did, and what a more durable approach to scoping and sequencing looks like. That context shaped nearly every meaningful conversation at the booth.
"The future of B2B isn't just connected systems — it's connected experiences."
Nick Burkhardt, Senior Growth Marketing Specialist, Zaelab
Beyond the Booth: Events That Made the Week
Alongside the conference floor, Zaelab hosted two evening events that gave the week a different kind of momentum.
The Private Commerce Dinner at Nora on Monday evening — co-hosted with BigCommerce — opened the week with an intimate gathering of manufacturing and commerce leaders at a Mediterranean restaurant steps from Navy Pier. With space limited to 15 guests, the conversation went deeper than a conference setting allows.
The centerpiece of the week outside the sessions was the PortulGo Launch Party at Three Dots & A Dash on Tuesday evening, co-hosted with Shopify. Chicago's legendary underground tiki bar in River North turned out to be the right setting for a product launch — the room filled with commerce leaders who had spent two days talking about what better B2B buying experiences could look like, now seeing one in action.
From Chicago to the Next Conversation
The contacts that came out of B2B Online Chicago span manufacturing, distribution, and industrial supply — organizations with complex buying workflows, large customer bases, and commerce infrastructure that has not kept pace with what their buyers now expect.
The questions that surfaced at the event — around portals, punchout, Shopify at scale, and AI data readiness — are not going to be resolved at the next conference. They require the kind of focused, specific work that starts with the right conversation. If your organization is working through any of them, get in touch.
