For a time, "disintermediation" was a popular theme. Many industrial distributors rushed to build e-commerce capability in-house, or partnered with — or took equity stakes in — e-commerce ventures.

At the time, this seemed like a reasonable strategy. Today, however, the partnerships are not talked about much and the equity stakes are being sold or written off.

E-commerce may play an increasing role in the industry, but current adoption rates are low and we believe there is ample time to adapt to change as it continues to unfold.

In the past few months, industrial distributors have been rethinking e-commerce strategies. In January, W.W. Grainger announced it was selling equity stakes in Material Logic, a newly formed entity consisting of TotalMRO, FindMRO and MROverstocks. This was a significant departure from the steadfast, e-centric vision Grainger had previously professed.

Then, in early March, Hughes Supply announced it was writing off bestroute.com and its equity ownership in supplyforce.com and taking a one-time charge of $8.9 million.

Ironically, bestroute.com was recently awarded the Standard of Excellence WebAward by the Web Marketing Assn.

Many of these e-commerce initiatives work well enough, but high costs and low adoption rates indicate that they may have been slightly ahead of their time.

In a previous edition of INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION , a study indicated that less than seven percent of responding companies were 40 percent of the way to full adoption of online purchasing. And while nearly 90 percent of respondents say the Internet will be important to purchasing over the next year, nearly three quarters are yet to see savings from online buying and less than 10 percent viewed their suppliers' online capability as very good or excellent.

To "e" or not to "e"? — that seems to be the question. Looks like some industrial distributors have decided that "not to e" may be the right answer for now.