The sooner a materials handling manufacturer or distributor finds out about new warehouse or manufacturing construction, the better chance they have of making a sale. Learning about these new projects before the specifying has taken place is not easy and is beyond the staffing abilities of many companies.

To meet this need, Cahner's CMD Group, in conjunction with Modern Materials Handling, will soon launch a Web-based Materials Handling Equipment Report. Users will log on to the site to find 5,000-7,000 listings each year of new warehouse and manufacturing construction projects with groundbreaking as far as 2 years out.

"That places you really early in the game. That is the key," says Kevan Sears, national sales manager at CMD. "We find out about these projects by questioning the right people – the people who are materials handling equipment specifiers."

Once users log on to the site, they can obtain information on the names of projects, construction locations and schedules, primary activities of the company, and the names and contact information for the decision-makers.

The information is searchable by state, zip code, region, and by nine segmented equipment categories. The design allows users to define what areas of the site to see, such as new projects in a certain area using a particular type of equipment, or track projects they are currently developing. They can also immediately send e-mails to specifiers before leaving the site.