b2b-procurement
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The 128-Year-Old Search Engine Manufacturers Still Use to Find Each Other
Thomas survived the death of its 34-volume directory by keeping the hard part - trusted industrial data - and changing the container. Its second act offers a practical lesson for any niche marketplace: own the taxonomy, earn buyer intent, then sell suppliers the tools to be chosen.
The 18th Street Camera Shop That Refused to Become a Website
A Holocaust survivor opened a camera counter on 34th Street in 1974. Fifty years later his shop is a rental house, a photo lab, a B2B supplier and a YouTube school - and it still keeps the lights on at one address in the Flatiron District.
Staples
Staples spent four decades selling the things that make work possible. Its more interesting act is turning a familiar office-supply store into the place where America finishes the fiddly jobs the internet cannot.
Zachary Garippa
Zachary Garippa is the co-founder and CEO of Order.co, the New York B2B spend-management and guided-purchasing platform he started in 2016 as Negotiatus. A Boston College finance grad who once worked a Morgan Stanley desk and a luxury-building door, Garippa built Order into a company connecting 40,000-plus vendors, serving 300-plus customers, and processing nearly half a billion dollars in annualized spend. He rises at 3:30 a.m., says he is 'trying to build the greatest company New York has ever seen,' and is chasing a Series C to get there.