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4 Things to Look for in an Online Industrial Flow Meter Store


Aug 16, 2013

As the e-commerce business model grows to include the mass flow meter market, there are some online players that have emerged. Over the last decade, companies like Instrumart, Omega, and others have entered the light and heavy industrial e-commerce game. Tech savvy 30-somethings are coming of age and embracing online buying as the norm rather than the exception, including sourcing flow meter needs online.

After doing extensive research, we found that these companies do offer industrial products online, but you need to understand what makes for a profitable long-term flow meter instrumentation partner—and what doesn’t.

4 Things to Look For:

1. Factory Direct vs. Third-Party Broker: If the online instrumentation store is a third-party broker of products, they are most likely not able to leverage years of experience on core technology. This will make service of the products slower and less efficient. Sierra has a global team of Technical Support personnel that can even answer your flow meter questions online.

2. In-stock industrial products vs. standard lead time products: Yes, many industrial flow meter companies offer ultrasonic flow meters for liquid measurement, vortex mass flow meters, immersible thermal mass flow meters, but these are not in stock. How can a third-party online store hold thousands of different products and technologies in stock? There just isn’t a business case for this model. But online flow meters stores that sell their products, from the factory, and can offer fully customized in-stock industrial products for next-day delivery. They can take the risk.

3. Personalized vs. Globalized: We live in an e-commerce world that promises “personalization” from “expert” engineers with every purchase and ultimate support. But the problem is that many of these online instrumentation stores offer hundreds of different products with varying technologies. How can a core group of engineers be experts in the nuances of all of these technologies? So this falls under the slump of jack of all trades and master of none. These third-party online stores also don’t have a global network of local sales partners that customers can call and get truly localized support, including traditional support like a person driving to your company to solve a complex application problem.

4. In-house service or brokered service:  The online stores with the best customer support offer products that come directly from the factory. These companies are experts in their core technology and can stand by the quality and delivery of their products. So the perfect ecommerce model for heavy industrial equipment, is fast, easy online purchasing with specialized, local, factory, and global support. This model will be a winner in the future.

Check out the video below to find out to meet all your flow meter equipment needs by ordering directly from Sierra.

Erica Giannini, Marketing Manager
Written By:
Erica Giannini, Marketing Manager
Sierra Instruments

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