Industrial Marketing

Market Pipeline was founded by Tom and Dave to help Michigan and Midwest's industrial suppliers and manufacturers harness the amazing power of the Web to diversify their customer bases.

The Midwest and specifically Michigan has tremendous roots in innovative products and manufacturing techniques. After all, the auto industry was started and continues to prosper in Michigan and the Midwest. Michigan is also leading the world in green technologies, many from the roots of the auto industry.

And Then Came Online Search!

"Google and the other search engines have broken the world into little tiny bits. No one visits a Web site's home page anymore...they walk in the back door, to the page Google sent them to." - Seth Godin, Meatball Sundae, Is Your Marketing Out of Sync?  

Let's say that you are an industrial supplier that sells industrial automation products. You're largest and most profitable vendor is Emerson Servo Motors. Now...a design engineer at a potential large account in your service area needs a servo motor. The 27 year old design engineer goes to Google and types in "Emerson brushless servo motor, 115DSA300CAAAA."  Is the design engineer sent to your product page or your competitors' product page?

Let's take another example. You are a second or third tier supplier for the auto industry. Your specialty is extruded plastic manufacturing. Your company has solved many product issues over the years using your expertise in product development as well as your knowledge of the plant floor. You know that your expertise in "complex profile extruded plastic" can be used in other industries. You just don't know how to reach them. Enter Google!

Now...a design engineer in Portland, Oregon is designing a medical device and goes to Google or another search engine and types in "complex profile extruded plastic". The engineer lands on your competitor's Web site in Massachusetts. BADDA BING BADDA BOOM....Michigan just lost out on a 3 million dollar contract and the jobs that go with it.

Let's say this as plainly as we can!

Michigan and the Midwest know how to make things, but many of our manufacturers are terrible marketers. Most of the manufacturers in this country are 3-4 years behind when it comes to using the Web to diversify their customer based. Suppliers in the auto industry should be investing a large portion of their resources to find new customers using Web technologies, not related to auto. Some of the new emerging green technologies should be using the Web to find new markets. Another important industry in Michigan, life science, is also doing a poor job of promoting their services using Web technologies.

To show Market Pipeline's commitment to industrial marketing allow us to show you our unique Line Card Manager. The Line Card Manager is a powerful database driven catalog that makes it easy for that 27 year old design engineer to find "Emerson brushless servo motor, 115DSA300CAAAA". More importantly the Line Card Manager is designed in such a way that the search engines can index or catalog the term "Emerson brushless servo motor, 115DSA300CAAAA", making it easy for the design engineer to find.

Not only that, Market Pipeline's Line Card Manager module make it easy for the Web site owner to update the product information...and without technical help or calling Market Pipeline.

Market Pipeline's Line Card Manager can also be designed for the manufacturer so that a Web user can easily find manufacturers comfortable with "complex profile extruded plastic". Perhaps an East Coast pharmaceutical manufacturer needs to out source their "in vitro toxicity screening". If the life science companies that offer these services are not visible for to the major search engines then they are missing opportunities...and jobs for Michigan.

Call Market Pipeline today. Find how we can help your company find new clients using Web technologies.  

Market Pipeline's Roots Are in Industrial Marketing.

Tom Repp was originally a partner in one of the early leaders in Web marketing called Quality Software Solutions (QSS) in Detroit. The founders of QSS were Robert Zeinstra and Tom Kelly, both head of the Sales and Marketing at Detroit Ball Bearing before it was purchased by Applied Technologies in 1997. Zeinstra and Kelly brought on Tom Repp to develop the Michigan and Midwest markets.

It was Tom's job to tell industrial suppliers and manufacturers about this new "channel to market"...the Internet. It was a tough go at first. Getting owners and Presidents to sit down and listen to the advantages of the Web was next to impossible. We held many seminars to educate industrial marketers on the Web. In 1997 there were many empty chairs.

However, QSS was successful at winning over several large manufacturers, specifically in industrial pumps and pneumatics. From several of these early successes and relations with some talented programmers QSS developed an award winning application called IcedCAD. Iced CAD could dynamically create full assemblies "on-the-fly" from discrete component CAD drawings or parts lists and then render the part at the browser level. This application dramatically reduced the time it took a design engineer to specify a product. This product continues to provide benefits to some of QSS's early clients such as Sun Hydraulics in Sarasota, Florida.

Market Pipeline's other partner, David Shires, is well known in West Michigan as one of the founders of Net-Link Systems, West Michigan's first Internet provider founded in 1995. David also has a Mechanical Engineering and Software Engineering degree and worked at Kalamazoo's Allen Test Product which was purchased by the SPX Corporation.  David knows the "back-end" of industrial marketing.

Even Market Pipeline's Detroit sales office is headed by David Tatro a former owner of Plymouth Wayne Welding Supplies in Wixom, Michigan. David's experience in understanding the industrial market is invaluable in the Detroit market.