Jon Hansen (pi Window On The World)

Like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, there are some things you just take for granted without really giving it much conscious thought. For those of us who have been in the purchasing industry for more years than we would care to admit, we can recall the days of frayed catalogs with paperclips and scribbled upon post it notes marking pages like the rings of a tree marks time.  This was the world of a buyer when there was no Internet, and catalogs such as the Thomas Register were indispensable tools of our trade. So what happened to Thomas Register, a buying guide listing industrial products and services that was first published in 1898? With the same dependable certainty of day turning to night and night turning to day, the Thomas Register has become the quintessential web-based collaborative sourcing tool ThomasNet.com. Today I will be joined by Mark Holst-Knudsen, President of ThomasNet, and Tom Greco, Vice President, ThomasNet.com to talk about this seemingly quiet evolution of a grea