It's difficult to watch TV, listen to the radio or read a magazine these days without being deluged by ads for
dotcom companies. William Shatner pitches Priceline.com, adorable children bemoan their fate in the corporate America of tomorrow for Monster.com and a pierced and tattooed Gen Xer teaches his
boss how to trade stocks for Ameritrade.com. One of the few places you aren't exposed to many dotcom ads is in the pages of quality magazines. Although many traditional
brick-and-mortar (the hip new term for traditional businesses) quality suppliers have set up e-commerce Web sites, few are actively promoting them the way you'd expect, given today's brave new
dotcom economy. I think there's a simple explanation: Most of the dotcom companies that are blitzkrieging the airwaves are relatively new. The competition these new companies bring (not to
mention the accompanying stock market fortunes) have led traditional companies to jump on the dotcom bandwagon. But because there aren't very many new quality suppliers, there isn't as much
pressure to devote massive resources to e-commerce. Why aren't there more new business start-ups in the quality field? The economy is booming. Manufacturers can barely keep
up with increasing demand. With such a burgeoning economy, you'd think that there would be plenty of room for new quality suppliers. But there are very few new entrants in the field. In fact, as
the recent Mahr-Federal merger illustrates, the quality industry seems to be consolidating. Many of our advertisers have complained to me that they've invested heavily in
designing their e-commerce sites and are having dismal returns. They've reduced their display advertising, direct mail, trade show and direct sales budgets to build spiffy e-commerce Web sites.
They tack their Web address at the bottom of their traditional ads, and then they sit back and wait for the sales to come pouring in--and wait and wait and wait. Many seem to have forgotten the
lessons taught in Marketing 101: Don't put all of your marketing dollars in one basket. A Web site should be marketed like any other product: with a well-diversified mix of media.
Why do the marketing problems of quality suppliers affect you? That's easy: you're missing out on a lot of really cool quality-related Web sites offering a lot of useful products and
services simply because you don't know that the sites exist. Industry leader Brown and Sharpe recently launched an ad campaign for its
e-metrology.com site that could lead other metrology suppliers to follow suit. Here are some other quality-related product sites you might not know about:  American Society for Quality ( www.asq.org
)--supplies in-depth information on the organization's activities as well as book sales, certification information and more.
Q-Soft ( www.q-soft.com
)--sells quality-related software, books and videos.
Quality Technical Books ( www.qtb.com )--provides quality-related books. Mitutoyo ( www.mitutoyo.com
)--offers more than 5,000 metrology devices online.
Quality America ( www.qualityamerica.com )--sells quality-related software, books and articles. Quality Digest Online ( www.qualitydigest.com
)--provides access to a free database of ISO 9000-registered companies and our new QualNet database of quality suppliers.
There are hundreds more quality-related sites, and many of the above listed sites provide links to them. I urge to you to visit an organization's Web site before making a purchase. I'd like to know what your favorite quality-related Web site is. E-mail the Web address to me at spaton@qualitydigest.com
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