This week we have arrived at the office of Steve Flagg, CEO of  product search engine SupplyFrame.  We have asked him to explain the unique characteristics and challenges of his vertical search space.

“In many vertical industries, searching product information in Google can be frustrating. Google’s great at giving you thousands of links to places that might have answers but you often don’t get the answers themselves.”

“This is an important issue in the electronics components industry, where†engineers and buyers need up-to-the-minute product information quickly to do their jobs. There are millions of parts by thousands of manufacturers and typically the information is only available on each company’s website, or worse, in a paper catalog. One of our clients has over 300,000 unique products – can you imagine finding a needle in that haystack?”

“Having the latest data is critical to our industry. Each part has a datasheet and a whole slew of technical characteristics that the engineer needs to know.  If even one component’s datasheet and specs are out of date, which happens every time a product is even slightly revised, an engineer can make an expensive design mistake. Sales calls to engineers can be ineffectual because a salesman cannot possibly review even a fraction of the parts an engineer might need.  Moreover, engineers don’t often like to be disturbed by sales people.”

“When we began SupplyFrame, we wanted to build a vertical search engine to improve the way that engineers do online research. Typically, engineers visit the site of each company that manufactures a part that might fit their requirements, then dig through the site for the information they need to make their decision.  This is very time consuming and manufacturer’s sites still make it hard for engineers to find what they need quickly and easily.”

“We created a simple search system that gives the engineer a quick look at the key information about a part – all the manufacturers that make it, the datasheet, specs, where they can find availability and where they can get more information.  Our links go directly to the correct page deep in each manufacturer’s site to get all the gory details.”