Teresa Herrmann on Building B2B eCommerce in Hydraulic Manufacturing

Teresa Herrmann manages digital commerce at Bailey International, a Knoxville-based manufacturer and distributor of hydraulic cylinders, pumps, motors, and valves, where she helps build the company's eCommerce program across its website, Amazon, and eBay channels. She came to manufacturing through customer service, and brought with her a background in luxury hospitality at Blackberry Farm in East Tennessee. Her conversation with B2BEA as part of the Women in B2B eCommerce series covers multi-channel catalog management, the data work that determines whether digital commerce performs, and what it looks like to build eCommerce expertise over time in a technical product category where accurate specifications are fundamental to the customer experience.

From Luxury Hospitality to Hydraulic Manufacturing

The common thread across Herrmann's career is an ability to go deep in the systems she works with and learn them well enough to improve them. At Blackberry Farm, she started as a reservations manager and moved into revenue management, eventually becoming a super user for the resort's property management system when the property transitioned platforms. "I had to learn very quickly so that I could help them too," she said.

A relocation to Knoxville opened the door to Bailey International. "Service is service, as long as you can make the customers happy," the HR director told her. Herrmann took the role as customer service manager. "After I got through being terrified of hydraulics, I decided I can do this," she said. Her first significant systems challenge was a transition to NetSuite that kicked off on her first day, complicated by a data migration with little cleanup and scripting to make the new system behave like the old one.

The Amazon Reconciliation That Changed Her Career

Herrmann came to eCommerce through a gap that opened up and a willingness to fill it. When a member of the technical support team responsible for reconciling Bailey's Amazon payments announced his departure, Herrmann said, "Just before you leave, teach me everything that you do about it."

From Amazon reconciliation, her responsibilities expanded to include the Amazon store as a whole, and then an eBay store managed entirely manually. Today the company operates across three channels — website, Amazon, and eBay — with approximately 4,500 SKUs on the site and 2,500 on Amazon. When Bailey hired an eCommerce director in 2021, she transitioned fully into eCommerce. "That was probably when I got hooked, because it was challenging and tough, but once it was done, it was such an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment," she said.

Two Website Builds, a Data Problem That Followed Every Step

Bailey International has built two eCommerce sites during Herrmann's time in the function. The first was built on SuiteCommerce Advance, constrained from the beginning by the condition of the data inside the ERP. The second site launched on BigCommerce after an evaluation process led by the eCommerce director, and took nearly a year to go live rather than the six months projected, largely because of accumulated scripting complexity.

The BigCommerce site has been live for roughly two and a half years, and the current focus is on audit work: making sure the data is actually right. "With hydraulics, if a spec is wrong, it could cause major problems in a whole system," Herrmann said. Current initiatives include a B2B portal for OEM customers to view proprietary parts, and a new cylinder product page layout that surfaces bore sizes, stroke lengths, and key specifications in a single view.

AI in Practice: Product Descriptions and One Feature That Changed How She Works

Herrmann came to AI adoption gradually and credits a specific presentation with accelerating the shift. "I'll feed it the information that it needs and it writes a beautiful description," she said. A presentation from Nick Pericles at B2BEA Scottsdale left a strong impression: "I was floored. I just had no idea."

One feature stood out: the ability to switch between a standard response mode and a deeper reasoning mode. "You can change it to thinking as opposed to a fast response, and I never would have known that if it weren't for him," she said. She has since expanded her use of AI to include spreadsheet analysis.

Women in B2B eCommerce

When Herrmann walked into Bailey International for the first time, it was "a sea of men." From her position as customer service manager, she hired deliberately. "I started hiring women for the customer service part of it," she said. "If you have the attitude and the service-mindedness, you can learn the technical part."

The Women in B2B eCommerce dinner at the B2BEA conference in Scottsdale was a meaningful moment. "It did my heart good to see so many women in our profession," she said. "It may be male-dominated, but that's not going to keep me from doing it." Her advice: "Just don't be afraid to challenge the status quo. Don't be afraid to say something if you see something."