Get On-Line or get Webbed Out!
September 20, 2000
The Fabric Industry Needs Web Standards
According to the July 2000 Webtrends(r) report, www.sipco.net received an average of more than 3,000 hits a day. (A 'hit' is one person looking at one page; If a person looks at 10 pages, that's considered 10 hits.) The most active area of www.sipco.net is the Fabric Buyers Directory. This demonstrates the need to consolidate in one place information that is easily accessible from anywhere in the world.
While we have focused on making www.sipco.net a useful resource (industry news, FBD, Classifieds, Discussion Forum, etc.), the site is not yet equipped to handle business transactions efficiently. The absence of such a tool, on our Website and others in the industry is a weakness borne by the entire industry.
The next step is to provide an online vehicle for buyers and sellers to transact business. F&FI is the cheerleader in this industry as far as we can see.
The steel and chemical industries already use the Web this way to do business. DuPont, Dow Chemical and several other chemical producers have been adding members at a rapid rate to participate in the creation of the universal standardized system for chemical trading. Esteel.com has become the major site for the metals industry.
Verticalnet.com runs 57 B-to-B sites for a broad range of industries including dental, aerospace, medical design, pulp and paper, laboratory, bakery supplies and many others. It's unbelievable.
Why aren't fabrics and home furnishings doing likewise? Why are we so slow to adapt? Do you wonder why a home furnishing purchase becomes so easy to postpone by the consumer?
We would like to join the revolution with your help. We invite CEOs of the major companies in the fabric industry to join forces with Sipco Publications in order to forward e-commerce activity within our industry worldwide. This industry sorely needs a marketplace where approved buyers can make purchases, using a standardized interface with a minimal learning curve. Putting the intricate process on the Web will allow small competitors to participate and new customers to buy from participating vendors immediately and with no setup costs. Built properly, an e-commerce exchange will make business more efficient and profitable. Any way we can lower our cost of doing business accrues to all.
So far, our progress toward such a standard has been slow, and as mentioned, slower than that of other industries. Several wholesalers and manufacturers already have proprietary systems to transact business. These firms understand that e-commerce provides efficiency that cannot be matched any other way.
However, as companies forge ahead, constructing Websites, each with unique specs, the result is a host of sites that are technically very different. Although these sites may generate revenue at the moment, they are somewhat myopic in their conception: They fail to address the needs of the entire industry and actually hinder progress towards a single, standardized online marketplace, accessible to everyone. If each company has its own privately developed system, it slows down the learning curve of using the Internet to transact.
By developing a standard system for the industry, we create the opportunity for anybody in the trade everywhere to buy or sell fabrics with any company. In the beginning, buyers and sellers will need to be approved and registered. After that, it's smooth sailing. Using a common interface, any buyer can purchase from any supplier, efficiently through any member of the system, in order to transact business with any supplier.
Wharnecliffe, a company in the U.K. has developed a site to transact fabric business. (See page 18.) This is a beginning of what I am talking about in this column.
Many Fabrics cannot be treated as a commodity like steel or chemicals: All vendors use different SKU systems and categorize their products differently. However, these obstacles can be overcome with your participation, attention and careful development. I'd like to set up a roundtable for a discussion about furthering the e-commerce revolution within the fabrics industry.
Sipco needs four to five CEOs and their teams to participate in developing the standards for this site. This site could be the largest company within our industry. I challenge you to come forward and help Sipco do it right so that everyone can benefit. Let me hear from you as soon as possible if you're interested. How could you not be?
Send your comments to eschneider@sipco.net.
Eric Schneider
Publisher
According to the July 2000 Webtrends(r) report, www.sipco.net received an average of more than 3,000 hits a day. (A 'hit' is one person looking at one page; If a person looks at 10 pages, that's considered 10 hits.) The most active area of www.sipco.net is the Fabric Buyers Directory. This demonstrates the need to consolidate in one place information that is easily accessible from anywhere in the world.
While we have focused on making www.sipco.net a useful resource (industry news, FBD, Classifieds, Discussion Forum, etc.), the site is not yet equipped to handle business transactions efficiently. The absence of such a tool, on our Website and others in the industry is a weakness borne by the entire industry.
The next step is to provide an online vehicle for buyers and sellers to transact business. F&FI is the cheerleader in this industry as far as we can see.
The steel and chemical industries already use the Web this way to do business. DuPont, Dow Chemical and several other chemical producers have been adding members at a rapid rate to participate in the creation of the universal standardized system for chemical trading. Esteel.com has become the major site for the metals industry.
Verticalnet.com runs 57 B-to-B sites for a broad range of industries including dental, aerospace, medical design, pulp and paper, laboratory, bakery supplies and many others. It's unbelievable.
Why aren't fabrics and home furnishings doing likewise? Why are we so slow to adapt? Do you wonder why a home furnishing purchase becomes so easy to postpone by the consumer?
We would like to join the revolution with your help. We invite CEOs of the major companies in the fabric industry to join forces with Sipco Publications in order to forward e-commerce activity within our industry worldwide. This industry sorely needs a marketplace where approved buyers can make purchases, using a standardized interface with a minimal learning curve. Putting the intricate process on the Web will allow small competitors to participate and new customers to buy from participating vendors immediately and with no setup costs. Built properly, an e-commerce exchange will make business more efficient and profitable. Any way we can lower our cost of doing business accrues to all.
So far, our progress toward such a standard has been slow, and as mentioned, slower than that of other industries. Several wholesalers and manufacturers already have proprietary systems to transact business. These firms understand that e-commerce provides efficiency that cannot be matched any other way.
However, as companies forge ahead, constructing Websites, each with unique specs, the result is a host of sites that are technically very different. Although these sites may generate revenue at the moment, they are somewhat myopic in their conception: They fail to address the needs of the entire industry and actually hinder progress towards a single, standardized online marketplace, accessible to everyone. If each company has its own privately developed system, it slows down the learning curve of using the Internet to transact.
By developing a standard system for the industry, we create the opportunity for anybody in the trade everywhere to buy or sell fabrics with any company. In the beginning, buyers and sellers will need to be approved and registered. After that, it's smooth sailing. Using a common interface, any buyer can purchase from any supplier, efficiently through any member of the system, in order to transact business with any supplier.
Wharnecliffe, a company in the U.K. has developed a site to transact fabric business. (See page 18.) This is a beginning of what I am talking about in this column.
Many Fabrics cannot be treated as a commodity like steel or chemicals: All vendors use different SKU systems and categorize their products differently. However, these obstacles can be overcome with your participation, attention and careful development. I'd like to set up a roundtable for a discussion about furthering the e-commerce revolution within the fabrics industry.
Sipco needs four to five CEOs and their teams to participate in developing the standards for this site. This site could be the largest company within our industry. I challenge you to come forward and help Sipco do it right so that everyone can benefit. Let me hear from you as soon as possible if you're interested. How could you not be?
Send your comments to eschneider@sipco.net.
Eric Schneider
Publisher
