Several industrial and high-tech giants have teamed up to create an online marketplace for selling industrial fluid-processing equipment.
Industria Solutions will launch this summer with backing by chemical giants DuPont and Ventro (formerly Chemdex), IBM and CMGI.
The firm will operate an online marketplace for the buying and selling of valves, pumps, motors, compressors and other materials and equipment, estimated as a $75-billion-a-year industry.
Industria has signed on for a number of e-commerce services through arrangements with IBM and software developer Ariba Inc.
Through Industria’s site (www.industria.com), processing plants in several industries – chemicals, oil and gas, pulp and paper, power generation and pharmaceuticals – will be able to buy materials from a central location. Already, the company has identified more than 2,000 equipment manufacturers and more than 1,000 customers in the United States, says Mark Menke, marketing director of the Mountain View, CA firm.
Menke claims that procurement through the Industria site will be 25% to 30% more efficient than the current paper-intensive methods, which involve engineers and purchasing executives spending a great deal of time in pursuit of several companies to supply different kinds of equipment.
Industria will make its money from transaction fees paid by clients – from 5% to 10%.
The company will promote the site through direct response space ads in industry-specific trade journals, trade shows and its sales force of nearly 30 people. The firm recently opened a satellite office in Houston.
Later this year, Industria will expand its offerings to include real-time pricing, electronic requests for quotations, auctions and reverse auctions (a practice in which several companies bid to supply an order and the lowest-price bidder usually wins).
Menke declines to project how large a slice of the overall $75 billion market Industria will get this year, but is optimistic about Industria’s long-term prospects.
“Ultimately,” he says, “we want a large piece of the market as companies see how efficient selling this way is.”
Network
