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Episode 1 | Taking Metals Online


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Quick Episode Summary

Greg Raece and Michelle Edwards-Lanham kickoff Episode 1 of the Metalpress Podcast with a focus on the rapidly evolving metals industry and how the industry is Taking Metals Online.

Online Metals has approached this change by developing a sales model that’s built around the customer experience and allowing them the purchasing flexibility they need.

With the ability to capture the entire buying process online from pricing to purchasing, the metals business now has to be so much more customer-focused. Listen in on how Online Metals taking metals online is shifting an age-old industry!


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Full Episode Details

Why the new way of buying metal is winning over an age-old industry

  • 0:40 - A Brief History of Online Metals from Michelle Edwards-Lanham
  • 1:24 - Modernizing our e-commerce site from the dot.com era
  • 2:41 - Moving from material quoting to a true e-commerce experience
  • 4:17 - Using loyalty to retain customers and work with their capital at hand
  • 5:32 - Shifting from a sales focus to a marketing focus
  • 6:31 - Who are the customers of Online Metals?
  • 7:48 - Crystal ball predictions about where the metals industry is headed

Quotes From This Episode

“We had blinking GIF’s, and all of that original dot.com 1.0 experience. So I really helped to bring it into a modern experience.”
- Michelle Edwards-Lanham


“Most of the other businesses that were online at the time, didn’t actually have e-commerce capabilities. They might have a website where you could locate them, but as a buyer, you still need to call and negotiate your price”
- Michelle Edwards-Lanham


“They’re acting like Blockbuster, where they’re just so entrenched in their existing capital and making sure that the existing footprint works, even though the trends aren’t there to support that model going forward, it limits their online options.”
- Michelle Edwards-Lanham


“I think there’ll be a big growth in micro-manufacturing where we’re going to see smaller services being done by smaller companies that you would normally think a larger industrial company could do”
- Greg Raece


“The buyers, they have access to all of the information. Nobody’s pricing is a secret. And so sellers like us have to work really hard on providing additional services, information, knowledge, data. Anything that is going to help our B2B2B customers eventually compete in the marketplace and win”
- Michelle Edwards-Lanham



In This Episode

Portrait of podcast contributor, Greg Raece

Greg Raece

President, Online Metals

Portrait of podcast contributor, Michelle Edwards-Lanham

Michelle Edwards-Lanham

Ecommerce Marketing Director, Online Metals





About Online Metals

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Online Metals is the world’s leading eCommerce metal supplier, specializing in small quantity cut-to-size metals and plastics, delivered in a fast and reliable manner.

Since 1998, Online Metals has expanded our catalog to over 85,000 different cut sizes, grown our national footprint to seven pickup locations across the U.S., and continued to improve upon our best-in-class customer experience.

Check out our materials: Alloy Steel, Aluminum, Anodized Aluminum, Beryllium Copper, Brass, Bronze, Carbon Steel, Copper, Cast Iron, Nickel, Nickel Silver, Plastic, Stainless Steel, Titanium, Tool Steel, Unistrut®, Wrought Iron, & Zinc

Shop by shape: Bars, Tubes, Sheets, Plates, and More.

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