Small business owners, for years, have gleaned manufacturing resources from Thomas Net. I have visited this site often to go directly to a supplier located in a specific geographical area. You can also list your business if you are a supplier, distributer  or manufacturer of a product or service. According to their site they say:

You can also search ThomasNet to find manufacturers, distributors and service providers – from Actuators to Zirconium and everything in between.

I find it fascinating to place a search for an item, i.e, bags and see the world-wide results. You can also search via catelogs. In addition there are several free whitepapers with cutting edge information that can grow your business. There is much more but you need to set aside about 20 minutes to explore the site.

But the news I wanted to share, is the comprehensive and informative blog. Now it may take a while to find the blog because it does not jump out at you with the words blog on the site. It is under the heading Industrial Market Trends.

One of the posts I found to be very relevant for this time in our economy is on the return of bartering.

Overall the entire site is very good. It is concentrated with information so just take your time grab a pencil and read. Also take the time to make comments to some of the posts. It is a powerful baby boomer business resource.