Grainger building 'Netdepartment store
By Staff -- Industrial Distribution, 9/1/1998
Lincolnshire, Ill.--In its latest bid to lead distribution online, W.W. Grainger, Inc. will launch a business-to-business commerce service that includes non-MRO supplies and services.Chairman and CEO Richard Keyser says the venture will be a separate unit from Grainger's online catalog. "We think of it as an Internet department store, where you can go around to different departments, but you have one checkout," he says.
Grainger is testing a front-end application in a partnership with Perot Systems Corp.'s TimeO Group, which the two companies say will improve the buying of business supplies, equipment and services. Grainger expects to launch the unit later this year.
Don Bielinski, a group president for Internet commerce at Grainger, says the initiative complements the online catalog and responds to customers' needs for a host of other goods.
"The key with Perot and launching this is how to expand that well beyond our products to get a broader assortment of distributor products," he says. "We think of our core as being small and medium-sized businesses. We've asked ourselves, beyond MRO products, what other types of indirect materials" do firms want. He declined to detail the new products and services, saying at press time that work is ongoing with technology providers and suppliers.
Large customers will benefit from the virtual department store as well, says Bielinski, noting that among Grainger's national contract customers, more than half of their purchases last year were one-time spot buys.
One-stop shopping and streamlined transaction costs should be attractive to buyers, sellers and others, says Mark Teflian, TimeO Group director at Dallas-based Perot Systems. "This system and toolset will facilitate and enhance customer relationships and set a new standard for business-to-business ordering and acquisition," he says.
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