Several distributors of industrial supplies located throughout Australia have committed to launch ecommerce web sites. More members of this buying group are expected to also join within the next 6 months. The companies are:

Collins Industrial Distributors - Adelaide, SA
IBS Engineering Supplies - Innisfail, QLD
Continental Eagle - Narrabri, NSW
Prime Industrial Supplies - Hobart, Tas
Baker & Farrow - Sandgate, NSW

These businesses have always been known to provide superior service when compared to larger corporate industrial distributors and will now be in a position to offer a superior ecommerce platform to their customers.

Product and pricing information from their major suppliers will be fed to the Integration Manager tool and then up through their web sites so prices displayed are always up to date. These businesses can service the retail market but also set-up specific pricing, promotions and freight charges for their account customers. Account customers will have access to their account information, previous orders, and are able to create template orders for quick re-ordering.

The technology and services used for this initiative has been provided by Australian-based ecommerce and internet marketing specialist Strategic Ecommerce with the platform used called StraightSELL.

Orders received online by these businesses will then be automatically routed into each of their accounting systems through integration that has already been done between the StraightSELL ecommerce platform and leading accounting packages such as Attaché, MYOB, Micronet and Quickbooks.

Jamie Lakes, Project Manager for this initiative said this project involves the democratisation of serious online selling functionality to small and medium sized businesses for whom the technology was previously price prohibitive.

Previously only the largest industrial distributors had the functionality available to their clients and many large corporate and government users of industrial supplies who value dealing with suppliers with electronic trading facilities have felt that they had very limited choice.

They now have the option of a group of distributors that will provide national coverage and an interoperable ecommerce system, added Mr. Lakes.

StraightSELL is a unique website ecommerce facility in that it accommodates retail selling on the internet by optimising each webpage for major search engines, but also has all the B2B ecommerce functionality to sell to corporate and government account customers who require secure private views of specific information.