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Getting on Track

Feb. 1, 2003
Electronic commerce may finally be set to merge into the mainstream. It has seemed like a Walter Mitty fantasy for most distributors over the past few

Electronic commerce may finally be set to merge into the mainstream. It has seemed like a Walter Mitty fantasy for most distributors over the past few years-"I wish I had the kind of deep pockets that (insert name of scary local competitor with headquarters out of state here) has. Then I would show them electronic commerce..."

Electrical Wholesaling has been telling you about the wonders of EDI, VMI and the rest of it for years, but it's really no surprise that these technologies haven't been widely adopted up to this point. After all, how many distributors have the time and money to set up separate, proprietary computer connections with each of their manufacturers, work out all the bugs, train everybody in how to use it and keep it updated forever? How many have the kind of clout it takes to tweak their vendors' noses and demand that they devote scarce money and personnel resources to setting up a special service just for one distributorship? Few.

Take heart, though, friends, that's all about to change. Thanks to the growth of the Internet, the dropping cost of computing power, cumulative advances in electronic commerce systems development and the untiring work of this industry's dedicated techno-rabble-rousers with visions of universal standards, the pieces seem to be in place to make true electronic commerce available to all electrical distributors, including those that are not likely ever to be on our annual "250 Biggest" list.

On the following pages we've assembled a package of articles that look at electronic commerce today from a variety of perspectives. We hope this will bring you up to date on the issue as it stands today and that it will give you some ideas about how your company might fit into the emerging picture of the industry's future.

About the Author

Jim Lucy | Editor-in-Chief of Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing

Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 40 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing newsletter, and as a contributing writer for EC&M magazine During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement.

Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling  and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted with his wife and three sons in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 30 years. 

About the Author

Doug Chandler | Senior Staff Writer

Doug has been reporting and writing on the electrical industry for Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing since 1992 and still finds the industry’s evolution and the characters who inhabit its companies endlessly fascinating. That was true even before e-commerce, LED lighting and distributed generation began to disrupt so many of the electrical industry’s traditional practices.

Doug earned a BA in English Literature from the University of Kansas after spending a few years in KU’s William Allen White School of Journalism, then deciding he absolutely did not want to be a journalist. In the company of his wife, two kids, two dogs and two cats, he spends a lot of time in the garden and the kitchen – growing food, cooking, brewing beer – and helping to run the family coffee shop.

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