E-commerce Offers Life Scientists Purchasing Options

Kim Ha uses the Internet to order buffers, enzymes, and other equipment. It's the electronic age. You communicate via E-mail. You surf the World Wide Web for everything from the local weather forecast to cheap airline tickets. Why not buy lab supplies over the Internet? With about 2,500 companies selling products to life scientists and more than 15,000 new products introduced each year, ordering lab supplies the traditional way can be a time-consuming task--maybe three to six hours a week sear

Written byIlene Schneider

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Kim Ha uses the Internet to order buffers, enzymes, and other equipment.

It's the electronic age. You communicate via E-mail. You surf the World Wide Web for everything from the local weather forecast to cheap airline tickets. Why not buy lab supplies over the Internet?

With about 2,500 companies selling products to life scientists and more than 15,000 new products introduced each year, ordering lab supplies the traditional way can be a time-consuming task--maybe three to six hours a week searching for and procuring products using printed catalogs and purchase orders. A number of companies now say those hours can be reduced to minutes by signing onto their Internet sites, browsing their online catalogs, and buying.

Electronic commerce, or E-commerce, is growing rapidly, and it's not just in consumer sales. "Business-to-business E-commerce is four to five times the size of business-to-consumer," says Victor Rosenberg, associate professor at the school of ...

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