Retailers still rule
Manufacturers are slowly starting to offer e-commerce, but portals are where the buying action is.
By -- Modern Materials Handling, 6/1/2000
From our perspective at Modern Materials Handling , it appears there's currently an explosion of new industrial e-commerce sites. Every day we receive press releases about new Web B2B "portals" selling equipment and supplies, new capabilities being added to existing sites, and new partnerships being formed among portal sites. Here is just a sampling of some of the sites we've heard about this year.
Many of these sites sell general industrial supplies and equipment; others specialize in particular areas.
In addition, Packexpo.com, the web site of the PackExpo trade shows, has announced plans to morph itself into an e-commerce site for packaging machinery and equipment. A section of "virtual exhibits" provides product photos, descriptions, and specifications.
It's a different story with individual vendors. An informal sampling of vendors at the recent North American Material Handling Show found not many manufacturers offering online purchasing on their own sites.
In many cases, e-commerce is a long way off; system suppliers are an obvious example-their offerings are too complex and individualized to be bought and sold online-at least at this point in time. (See Internet Update, February 2000 .)
Those companies that are selling products through their sites are selling straightforward products like dunnage, or lift truck parts-but not lift trucks; that's too complicated for most companies right now. (Although, if you can buy a Saturn online, why not a lift truck?)
But on the whole, the model that's developing seems to be similar to other e-commerce sites, or to real-word stores, for that matter: Retailers still rule.
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