InformationWeek

Web Sales: Not Just Consumer Products

Manufacturers of industrial goods are beginning to sell their wares online

By Clinton Wilder
Issue date: Nov. 11, 1996

The vast majority of products for sale on the World Wide Web are consumer items such as music CDs, flowers, wine, clothing, and PC software and games. But a few cyber-pioneers are starting to sell heavy-duty industrial products on their Web sites--the results are encouraging.

For example, Weirton Steel Corp., a $1.5 billion steelmaker in Weirton ,W. Va., has begun selling sheet-steel products from its excess inventory on its Web site .

The site not only replaces Weirton's former method of sending faxes listing the inventory to around 75 customers, but it also opens an instant global market.

In the month since starting the service, Weirton Steel has had E-mail inquiries from China, Iceland, Japan, Germany, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and several other countries. The company says it has made several online sales with overseas customers, though it won't disclose specifics.

'Marketing Is Critical'
"Steel is a very tough business to be in, and steelmaking technology doesn't change very much," says Pat Stewart, Weirton's director of IS. "So the marketing side is critical, and we see the Web as a very important opportunity."

Although Weirton is considered the first in its industry to sell its products on the Web, it's not alone among industrial manufacturers. Large and small companie s are starting to make the transition from "brochureware"--online catalogs and marketing information--to actual Web commerce.

Buy It Online, a Web site that tracks products that can be bought on the Web, now lists sites selling business products that range from dental prosthetic devices to industrial storage drums to warehouse shelving.

"Some of the companies that initially put up sites as PR and corporate positioning are starting to sell their products," says Ri Regina, VP of NetPresence Inc. in Dayton, Ohio, which runs the site at http://www.buyitonline.com.

"Many manufacturing companies have been hesitant in the past, but they're starting to see that the Internet is a very cheap way to sell. Put it up there, it can't hurt."

Online Credit Checks
Some sites, such as Weirton Steel's, don't accommodate encrypted credit-card numbers for purchases but invite new customers to submit credit information for a standard credit check. Weirton customers simply register on the site, an d payment terms for online purchases are the same as for products bought through traditional channels. Customers submit bids encrypted with Netscape's Secure Sockets Layer protocol.

Other industrial Web sites use credit-card encryption technologies such as MasterCard and Visa's Secure Electronic Transactions protocol. EPD Technology Corp. began selling ultrasonic and thermal sensor devices last month on a site hosted by AT&T's SecureBuy Service ( IW , Oct. 14, p. 14 ). "Our traditional channels are catalogs, trade journals, and the Thomas Register, but not everyone subscribes to those," says Alan Bandes, VP of marketing at EPD Technology in Elmsford, N.Y. "We were looking for an alternative channel, and nowadays the alternative is the Web."

Weirton Steel also outsources its Web site, to Internet Services Corp. in Pittsburgh. The provider designed a customized database that automatically removes items from the site inventory after they' re sold. Transactions are handled by Netscape Commerce Server software running on a Sun Microsystems dual-processor SparcServer 20 on a T1 backbone.

"The database can sort the bids by any criteria that Weirton wants, so their decision process is better than when they had to sort through faxes," says Internet Services president Abu Noaman. "It really made sense to put it on the Web."

And if the Web makes sense for sheet steel, anything is possible.

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