Global Supply Net launches jancentral.com

By Staff -- Industrial Distribution, 9/1/2000

New York-There's a new e-commerce player in town-this time in the janitorial supply and service industry.

In July, Global Supply Net introduced jancentral.com, a portal providing commerce and content for manufacturers, distributors and end users of janitorial supplies and services. Global Supply Net is an e-commerce company targeting fragmented distribution channels.

The online ordering portion of the site was still being tested at press time, but GSN president Joshua Fruchter expected it to be officially up and running this fall. In early August, Fruchter said 2,700 members had signed on with jancentral.com, including manufacturers, contract cleaners and distributors.

The main purpose of the site is to provide the janitorial supply community with content and commerce opportunities, said Fruchter. Industry news, events, new product announcements and other features will be included. Distributors can liquidate excess inventory through online auctions on the site, as well, said Fruchter.

Jancentral.com is just one part of GSN's e-commerce offering. The first part is an industry product database, to be called SKU Bank, which will list manufacturers' SKU numbers for janitorial products. GSN will then match each participating distributor's product line against SKU Bank to create a master catalog for the distributor. The distributor, in turn, encourages customers to order from that master catalog over the Internet. Orders are entered via the distributor's Web site, with links to jancentral.com.