French Gerleman Electric, MO. . . Horizon Solutions, NY. . . Stuart C. Irby Co., MS. . . will benefit their businesses with new direct product marketing capabilities. AlaMark Technologies, San Antonio, TX, is managing the build out of a unique, jointly developed, product content database. The content is being delivered to the distributors through AlaMark's SupplyConnectPRO software so they can immediately launch personalized, direct marketing campaigns using print, fax, email, and on-line media.

"This content database is unique within the electrical industry because the product information is entirely 'manufacturer centric'. The product information will reflect exactly the 'words and pictures' that the manufacturer intended." Jeff Merchant, CEO of AlaMark, says, "Capturing product information following this manufacturer centric approach, allows the individual "branding" and "marketing essence" of every manufacturers' products to be accurately and powerfully marketed by distributors."

Further Merchant states, "The manufacturers' product information will not be 'editorialized', 'commoditized', 'normalized', or 'rationalized' in any way. Our distributor customers believe the manufacturers have worked very carefully to build great product information that accurately portrays the essence of their products value and competitive differentiation. Logically, their product information should not be changed in any way. We are simply capturing it, verbatim, and making it available to their authorized distributors in our very powerful direct product marketing software solution - SupplyConnectPRO. This is product information to sell with, not global business system data. We have successfully perfected this model within the industrial and cabinet hardware distributor verticals, and are simply replicating the same process for progressive distributors within the electrical vertical."

Bill French, President, French Gerleman Electric advocates, "Vanguard Distribution Group distributors formed their alliance several years ago to share in the development and use of new technology and systems to advance their companies progress. Our teaming with AlaMark is a direct result of this alliance, and will put our group in a strong position regarding content management and catalog (both print and electronic) production."

The content database and SupplyConnectPRO are deployed within the distributors business to help them sell their products to customers using proven, multimedia marketing techniques. It gives distributors one place to 'keep' their own product information and produce a huge variety of direct marketing outputs. Existing distributor staff can personally control and quickly produce multimedia catalogs that can be full line, market specific, and product specific, or, even customer specific. With SupplyConnectPRO these "catalogs" successfully go to market through the software's ability to capture and make sense of the product consumption of individual buying influences, and then deliver the right set of product information to those customers using print, web, fax, e-mail, cd-rom, or file extracts. SupplyConnectPRO is a unique and affordable software solution that is bringing scores of distributors personalized, finger tipped control of their multimedia catalog marketing needs.