Although there is a lot more to write about BSE and FMD, I think I have done my share and it is time to look at something else before we all get bored.

More and more business is being conducted on the Internet which has rapidly become our means of communication and it will also become our supermarket.

The only mail you receive from your mailman these days are bills, which you can pay via the Internet either by home banking or with your credit card. E-mail has replaced the mailman, telex and fax and if you need a personal touch, you pick up the phone.

Few remember that only 25 years ago we could only do business overseas by sending and receiving cables, which are now totally defunct.

More and more websites come on line to bring businesses into contact, some of which offer B2B, others only access to databases where you can find those you wish to contact.

This has opened the way to newcomers and shut the door on old-timers. You sometimes get the strangest bedfellows as an African trader reported having recently received an e-mail enquiry from a drum-maker who wanted to buy raw skins.

It took both parties some time to understand that the drum-maker produced musical instruments and not tanning drums and that the required quantity would run into a couple of dozen pieces, not a container load. This kind of access by outsiders into our trade was previously absolutely impossible, and frankly speaking gives a friendly note in an otherwise dry communication.

So we have the Internet which is the world’s cyber meeting place in which each industry has its own niche, and there are the fairs, which are also meeting places, the traditional meeting places, where a person shakes hands with another person rather than exchanging passwords.

We all remember the Semaine du Cuir which was the annual event where people brought large offer lists and where a very substantial portion of a year’s purchases and sales were done.

Apart from a myriad of local fairs we now have two main events, Lineapelle and the Asia-Pacific Leather Fair. And of course, there is the scheduled first edition of Le Cuir a Paris, which is obviously meant as a revival of the much missed Semaine du Cuir. We will see if the industry responds positively to this initiative.

Are all these meeting places useful, and do they actually produce business? We get attendance figures of visitors and exhibitors, and even if some of us may suspect that the reported number of visitors may be hyped by counting repeat-visitors as one-time visitors, one does get a reasonable idea by walking through the aisles when attending a fair whether that fair is or is not successful. By talking to people you also get a fair idea of whether business was done.

But there are as yet no objectively reliable figures and/or statistics available of the number of people who visit websites, and who as a result of that visit actually conduct any business. There are also no figures available as to how many people subscribe to B2B websites and how many of the subscribers actually do business and benefit financially from that business.

The internal analysts of websites have, of course, very precise information including the names of people who just hop in to take a look, even at what time and for how long, but that is definitely top secret and the attendance of a website is quantified unilaterally and without objective verification by those who have a distinct interest in making everybody believe that the site is a great success in order to attract new visitors and members.

Some websites require membership fees, with or without a certain trial period. But when a site heralds how many registered members they have, they make no distinction as to how many are trial members and how many are actual paid-up members.

The advantage of the fairs is that you can look people in the eye, and you can talk to them, touch their leather, but you have to travel to have that privilege. With a website the contact is totally sterile, but the cost in time and money is just a fraction of visiting a fair, and to touch the leather you have to call in the help of a courier service, but again that is cost efficient compared with a fair. A fair is a sporadic event, even if there are a myriad of fairs these days, whereas on-line business can be conducted 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

In my view on-line trading of consumer items, though not (yet) profitable, is our future way of shopping, whereas on-line trading of commodities such as hides and skins cannot be compared with that of consumer items and will not be that easy.

In fact one of the B2B providers in our trade is already shifting from pure B2B to something that is defined as service providing with a wide range of options. Isn’t that what agents have been doing for years in our business. Of course this is in a far smaller and less sophisticated way, but definitely the service provided is an evolution of what agents have been doing.

If I look into the future of our trade I see the reality and cyber meeting and trading places amalgamate, either in close collaboration or even into one single entity. The first step in that direction has been made by the Italians, who via Unic are practically bonding Lineapelle and their promised B2B website. This process doesn’t seem to be easy as Unic have not been able to meet their own deadline of the end of March, but I believe all B2B sites in our trade will move in that specific direction.

I also believe that a lot of the ‘old’ will survive the cybernisation and adapt to the ‘new’. Warehouses of chemicals will remain because although you can buy your chemicals on line from Germany you want to have them delivered tomorrow in New Zealand and not after six weeks. Finished leather and shoes, bags etc, will still need a ready supply line.

Sam_Setter@yahoo.com