I just finished writing an article for the November issue of Automation World on e-commerce then saw this item on Cnet News.com this morning. For my article, I interviewed people who developed three industrial automation product e-commerce sites. Karl Slabaugh is the e-commerce lead at AutomationDirect (http://www.automationdirect.com). That company is perhaps the father of automation direct sales beginning 10 years ago as PLCDirect with the ubiquitous catalog. Up until then, catalog sales was pretty much component level with companies like Grainger and Newark and come computer sales.
I also talked with Howard Minnnick, who spent some time at Phoenix Contact before founding Automation Systems Interconnect (http://www.asi-ez.com). Howard built the company from the ground up with the idea of selling only on the Web. He says things are going well there. Mike Rothwell of Advantech Automation (http://www.advantech.com) is in the throes of getting that company's e-commerce site off the ground.
While the panelists on the Cnet discussion debated the future of e-commerce in general, the model seems to be working for some companies in manufacturing. Both Siemens and Rockwell Automation made big splashes with e-commerce sites in the late '90s that were quietly closed. I'm sure that they use the Internet for distributor sales communications, but not as a general way of going to market.
Tim Hohmann built AutomationDirect from the ground up as a direct marketer. Every product sold and position in the company is evaluated as to applicability to the model. Howard Minnick talked in his interview about how to be successful in e-commerce, the company should be built from the ground up for that model.
So the question for automation buyers is whether this is a good niche business, or whether the major companies will try to buy their way back into the e-business by picking up one of these companies. If so, will they be able to continue the success.
E-commerce experts: You ain't seen nothing yet. Opportunity will knock louder than ever for online business in the next 10 years, panelists say. [CNET News.com]
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