Improving Research, Design, & Manufacturing » Industrial Supplier Listings

How do engineers and buyers currently find products and services online?

T. Brian Jones — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:15:28 +0000

Right now, and I mean right this second… there are thousands of engineers and technical buyers searching for industrial products, components, materials, and services across hundreds of industries and thousands of product categories. The web traffic on industrial directories alone is on the order of 500,000 visits per day.

These searches end in a page that links to hundreds of suppliers for a specific category (5,300 in adhesives on Thomasnet,1,300 on Macrae’s Blue Book, and 1,100 results on Globalspec). “Look now many suppliers we have.” This seems exciting but is an absolute nightmare for someone looking for products. What’s next? The engineer or buyer has to:

click through dozens of supplier websites
review products and guess if each company sells what he needs
call a central number and describe his application
get connected to a manager and describe his application
wait for a call from a local rep to describe his application
contact a distributor to actually purchase the product
get referred to another company because this one doesn’t have what he needs
start over!

Let suppliers find you

Industrial Interface eliminates all this mess and puts engineers and buyers in direct contact with a local sales rep who has already screened the application and knows that he sells exactly what is needed. Wow! That is so simple. Why not share your application with our community and let suppliers find you?

How do we do this

Our suppliers create incredibly detailed profiles where they input all of the products, services, and certifications for the companies that they sell products for. We use this data to match your projects with relevant suppliers both inside and outside of our system.

Our industrial search engine

If you aren’t ready to post a project to an open system, at least give our aggregated industrial search engine a try. We’ve compiled 40 of the best search sites into a custom Google search engine that makes it quicker and more efficient to find what you’re looking for. Why not search all 40 of these sites at once?

Making our suppliers more accessible to engineers

T. Brian Jones — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 01:50:00 +0000

When industrial salespeople sign up for our site, they complete a detailed supplier profile including their products and services. Our system stores all this information in a database, and we use it to match engineering projects to the right suppliers. To show this we built some quick links to basic search pages that list this information in an easily to read way. We’re hoping by making this data accessible, our users will gain a deeper understanding of how our system works.

Search suppliers by products they sell: Anaerobic Adhesives, Power Supplies, Solenoid Valves, Vacuum Pumps… Search by the thousands of products that suppliers have indicated they sell.
Search suppliers by services they offer: Looking for a job shop that does Rotary Die Cutting or a rep firm specializing in UV Bonding? Search suppliers by the thousands of services that they have indicated they offer.
Search suppliers by companies they represent: One of the most unique datasets that Industrial Interface maintains about it’s suppliers is a list of the companies they represent. Engineers are often looking for a product from a specific manufacturer, but don’t always know who rep’s that manufacturer in their region. Our system captures this data and makes it easy to find all the suppliers of products made by 3M, Rogers Corp., or all the companies our suppliers list.
Search suppliers by certifications they maintain: It’s often difficult to find suppliers with certain niche certifications that you need for an application. Here is a great way to find them: ISO13485, Class 100 Clean Room, ITAR Compliant…

Unlimited engineering leads with our Standard Supplier Account

Chris Powell — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:21:08 +0000

This post is meant for Technical Suppliers looking for more leads from engineers. Data and pricing are accurate as of July 2010. Call for details: 858-633-8158.

Industrial Interface is the number one source for qualified engineering leads posted by engineers who need to buy right now. We’ve always offered these leads at flat fee of $50 each. This is great for supplier firms or OEMs that only offer a few niche products. In contrast, Manufacturer Rep Groups, Supplier Firms, Larger OEMs and other firms that offer a broad array of products and services benefit from our monthly subscription plan offering unlimited access to leads that match their profile.

Here’s what happening

Over 1,500 industrial manufacturers, OEMs, and supplier firms are already represented on Industrial Interface.
Engineers at hundreds of manufacturing companies are using Industrial Interface to source solutions for their designs.
The average project posted by engineers is worth $100,000 annually for suppliers. That’s good business!

Standard Supplier Account (monthly subscription)

Our price for subscriptions is $100/month with a minimum of 3-months and no maximum (discounts are available for 6 and 12 month packages). So what do you get with a subscription?

Unlimited access to leads: You will have the ability to see the contact information for every project in Industrial Interface. No more thinking to yourself, “I’d like to contact that guy, but I need some more details before ponying up $50.”

Automatic notification of leads: With a completed supplier profile and a standard supplier account, our system will automatically notify you of all projects that are relevant to your business based on the information you enter into your profile. You can also login and browse all the leads in the product categories you represent.

Ratings and review: We want suppliers to spend time working with engineers who want to work with them. To ensure this, engineers rate their interactions with you and we track who you contact. If you SPAM engineers or don’t sell anything close to what they are looking for, you can be kicked off of Industrial Interface. We don’t want to waste anyone’s time, and I think we’ve all made enough cold calls in our life anyway!

Our Guarantee

We’ve been working hard to develop partnerships that bring more valuable engineering projects to our system, and we’ve seen huge success. We are so sure that you will see a favorable ROI on this investment that we are offering 6-months free if you are unsatisfied after a 6-month trial.

Get more qualified leads from Industrial Interface. If you are new to Industrial Interface, there may be discounts available. Contact me directly to sign up: powell@industrialinterface.com or 858-633-8158.

Our Top Tweets from Last Week

T. Brian Jones — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:18:45 +0000

Amazing periodic table. Each element has a video explaining it’s history, uses, characteristics, etc. – http://bit.ly/3fY40S
The humorous result of years of Intense Study and Engineering Experience http://bit.ly/1BJ8Yv
Twitter Lists for Nerds – engineering, science, technology, and even NASA! http://bit.ly/4jFNhI
Follow all the nasa twitter feeds in one list – http://bit.ly/4mIJ0z
My favorite engineering blog discussing innovations in rural Africa. – http://www.afrigadget.com/

Top 10 Features of Globalspec, Good & Bad (Online Industrial Supplier Listings Part II)

T. Brian Jones — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:03:19 +0000

Globalspec is probably the most popular of all the industrial supplier listings for engineers and designers. They boast 5 Million registered users, including engineers, purchasing agents, technicians, etc. They have a huge supplier database, and are branded as the Engineering Search Engine. Most other sites cater specifically to purchasing departments, although Globalspec’s offerings don’t differ much from the norm.

Highlights for Engineers and Designers

The Good

Globalspec has one of the largest supplier databases on the web, along with Thomasnet and Macrae’s Blue Book, and is one of the easiest supplier listing sites to navigate.
Globalspec maintains one of the largest engineering forums on the web. There’s an active community of engineers helping each other with simple to very technical problems.

Users can create a highly customizable home page, much like Google’s or Yahoo’s homeages where you can embed widgets and move them around. Globalspec can be used as your main portal to the internet at work.
Bold companies in search results are paying customers and there is generally a lot of good info about their products and services.
A new offering is a private area for users to manage projects and suppliers. It’s a simple interface, reminiscent of a PC file system, that let’s you track project details, suppliers you are working with, and any associated research or notes.
Newsletters, product alerts, & product announcements are constant and very detailed. There are dozens to choose from.

The Bad

Niche Categories? – Categories are well organized, but generally aren’t niche enough, leaving you with hundreds or thousands of companies to choose from in each sub category. Other sites like ThomasNet maintain more sub categories and make it easier to select companies to source from. Major companies that you already know about typically dominate the top of result pages.
The Engineering Search Engine is different but not noticeably better or more relevant than Google for general search. Globalspec does offer very specific search engines for material properties, patents, engineering standards, etc.
Search by Specs or Part Numbers – Users have a limited ability to search for parts and components by spec or part number, but only paying suppliers can add these detailed listings (and even that is severely limited by cost and time). This is great if you can buy from 1 of the 10 or so companies in any given category that is paying to list their products. Otherwise, this is limiting. Surprisingly, I’ve never found this useful as an engineer.
Privacy Concerns – Engineers and Buyers are required to register in quite a bit of detail to view company listings. Clear in their privacy policy, but rarely known by users, is that every time you click on a company that is paying for an account with Globalspec, that company receives a detailed report including your name, contact information, company and what you’ve been up to on Globalspec.

If you could add one feature to Globalpec, what would it be?

Online Industrial Supplier Listings Part I: A Multi-Post Review

T. Brian Jones — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:39:53 +0000

A comprehensive feature on Industrial Supplier Listings

Because of the need for these listings, I am going to do a series of reviews on many of the most established ones. There are literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of these listings scattered around the internet, but a handful have developed incredibly detailed categories, seemingly endless suppliers for each niche, and many have their own features that make them unique.

What are they?

Engineers have been using supplier listings for almost as long as the term “engineer” has been used to describe the profession. Some of these listings began their life over 100 years ago in print form, but despite their age, have scarcely evolved since they were digitized into searchable online listings about a decade ago.

The basic interface provides engineers with increasingly specific categories that they can click through to eventually find suppliers of very niche products and services. Some of these listings boast hundreds of thousands of categories and millions of suppliers worldwide.

How are they used?

Searchable supplier listings, however un-useful when an engineer is first tackling a new problem, are incredibly useful when searching for common components, known materials, replacement or supplementary parts, a new supplier for the same thing, etc., and are widely used by purchasing departments satisfying well developed BOMs.

There will always be a need for directories where engineers and procurement specialists can quickly find suppliers for specific products and services that have already been specified (That’s why we think of these listings more as complimentary services to Industrial Interface rather than competitors.)

Who are they?

The sites that I’ve identified as some of the largest and most useful are the ones I’m going to review. They are listed below.

Globalspec
Alibaba
Direct Industry
ThomasNet
Macrae’s Blue Book
Global Sources
Medical Device Link
Kellysearch

Are there similar or related resources that you use?

Have you found any of the smaller or more niche listings particularly useful?

Have I missed any major listings or related resources?

What is your professional opinion of these listings?

Suggest others to check out or review in the comments. Company linkbacks welcomed!