Event
Summary
In the seventies,
Americans would take foreign visitors to large supermarkets or department stores
to give them a one stop encapsulation of American culture. These days, friends
from overseas are more typically taken to visit Home Depot. So it's no surprise
that independent E-commerce sites devoted to home building and improvement are
starting to sprout. Two announced recently are buzzsaw.com and ourhouse.com.
Buzzsaw.com
is a portal site for people in the construction industry. It is a product of
Autodesk, Inc., a well-known maker of computer-aided design software. According
to the company, "buzzsaw.com's total service offering is the only one to address
all core functions of the fragmented building design and construction industry-design
collaboration, construction administration, bid management, and buying." Visitors
to buzzsaw.com will be able to access industry information, purchase products
and services, develop secure areas for members of a project team to share information,
including blueprints and specifications, and conduct real-time meetings. Autodesk
states that in the $672 billion construction industry it is common for almost
30 percent of the project cost to be attributed to administrative inefficiencies.
Ourhouse.com
is a consumer site that brings together products and information from home improvement
suppliers, information on various home improvement tasks, online access to home
improvement specialists and the ability to purchase goods and services. Ourhouse.com
is partnered with Ace Hardware and brings consumers access to Ace's own warehouse
distribution network and to its established relationships with home improvement
manufacturers.
Market
Impact
We are particularly
taken with buzzsaw.com's innovative use of the Internet to provide services
to its target audience. Whether they can succeed at inducing hard hats to work
online remains to be seen, but the site demonstrates a creativity that is all
too rare. Ourhouse.com is putting itself up against Home Depot, which is still
developing its E-commerce strategy after attempting to ban its suppliers from
selling on-line earlier this year. Ourhouse.com could become the Amazon of home
improvements if it can move quickly and establish both a brand and a reputation.