In October, Stephen Philpott, president of Las Vegas-based Bearing Belt Chain Co., Inc. attended the annual Power Transmission Distributors Assn. Convention in New Orleans. While there, Philpott recalls, he met attendees who each told him they had not received a single call from a distributor in months.

"Now these guys aren't a couple of big 'smokestacks' waiting to sign a million dollar-a-year contract," he says. "But they represented potentially viable customers, nonetheless. There still are a lot of small-to-medium sized customers like them out there that can be very profitable, and who are looking for service."

Philpott relayed the story to several distributors at the PTDA convention, adding that, "Maybe you need to go back and look at your market and some of the businesses you've been ignoring in the past. It just may be time to revisit them and see if these customers, who were at one time too small for you, are now a very good customer to go after."

In New Orleans, he also participated in a panel discussion on whether or not distributors and manufacturers could overcome areas of occasional mistrust and work together more closely.

For Philpott, both sides of that issue are symbolized by the same thing: technology. He is bothered by manufacturers who have not taken what he calls, "the technological leap of faith." That does not mean they don't have fast, state-of-the-art Web sites. Rather, Philpott is referring to what manufacturers will, and will not, put on those sites.

They will share what Philpott calls, "only a minimum of information, but not the depth that I feel I need to have if we're going to trust each other. Some of them will tell me information over the phone that they won't tell me electronically. Those are the manufacturers that don't trust me. That's wasted money, wasted expense."

Back home in his Las Vegas office, he expresses optimism at the way things have been going in his backyard.

"For the first time in many months, I hear more positive comments," he says. "Customers are planning ahead. Several have jobs or bids that are pending. Housing starts slowed down for a while but have picked up lately. Plus, we see a more consistent release of federal, state and county money for building jobs, and that ripples through the economy here, too."

Web site complaints aside, Philpott sounds like someone who is keen on the future of the power transmission industry. The impressive attendance at PTDA in New Orleans is one sign, he points out. Such meetings, he insists, can be a great asset, one to which he sees people returning.

"This year, distributor attendance was up 25 percent," he says. "I feel people are coming back [to conventions]. They realized they made a mistake not to go or not to come up with more disposable income in order to attend the last year or two."