Hello again.
Well, the first quarter of 2018 is in the books, and it’s definitely been an interesting one for industry. In our Thomas Index Report, we’ve covered sourcing activity trends driven by everything including truck driver shortages, the eCommerce landscape, sustainable packaging, steel tariffs, and more.
We capture petabytes of buyer behavior data at Thomasnet.com literally. If you’re not a data geek like we are here at Thomas, one petabyte is equal to 1,024 terabytes of data – and just for some context, one petabyte of data is enough to play 2,000 years worth of MP3 songs. It’s enough data for 48,000 miles of 8-1/2 inch-wide photos placed side by side – which would wrap around the equator twice.
A petabyte is even enough data to store the DNA of the entire U.S. population, and clone it – twice. That’s an incredible amount of buyer behavior data, and it’s being generated by users on our platform.
Let’s take a look at what those buyers were sourcing the most on our platform during the first quarter of 2018. I’m going to cover three top 5 lists – to see those lists expanded to the top 20, download our free 2018 Q1 Sourcing Activity ebook at the end of this video.
The top five products by sourcing activity volume at Thomasnet.com were Steel, Printed Circuit Boards, Fasteners, Corrugated Boxes, and Food Products. We covered every one of these categories in depth in a Thomas Index Report in recent months, and you can see all of those videos in the Thomas Insights section at Thomasnet.com.
The top five services sourced by volume on our platform were CNC Machining, Machining, Metal Stamping, Contract Manufacturing, and Plastic Injection Molding. No big surprises here, as these are core services required across the full spectrum of manufacturing and industry.
Finally, let’s take a look at the categories that saw the highest increase in sourcing activity in Q1 2018 over Q1 in 2017. Topping this list is Square and Rectangular Tubing, followed by Iron Castings, Mixers, Stainless Steel Bars, and Containers. If you’re a supplier in any of the categories on any of these lists, there’s significant opportunity happening right now at Thomasnet.com.
Well, that’s what our data shows for the first quarter of 2018. Again, I’ve covered just the top 5 categories on these lists. To see the full top 20 categories on each list, download our free ebook now.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week!