Gov Purchasing
Finding Vendors on the Internet
By Richard White
May 19, 2005, 15:35

With the emphasis these days on procuring commercial products in lieu of government specified-products -- and the accompanying emphasis on market research -- many government buyers find themselves spending a good portion of their day looking for vendor information.

This installment presents a few thoughts on finding vendors on the Internet.

Define Product/Service Requirements

Get together all the relevant information you can about the product/service before you start. Examples of helpful questions to ask are:

• Does the product have an assigned National Stock Number (NSN)?
  
  
• What is the estimated price of the procurement?
  
  
• If it's a federal requirement, is the requirement being posted by your agency (or has it been posted in the past) at FedBizOpps or the Commerce Business Daily?
  
  
• If it's a federal requirement, has the requirement been posted in FedBizOpps by another federal agency? (More about how to determine this later.)
  
  
• If it's a state and local requirement, is the requirement being publicly posted (or has it been posted in the past) by your agency?
  
  
• If it's a state and local requirement, has the requirement been posted in FedBizOpps by a federal agency?
  
  
• Have other buyers in your agency bought the same or similar product/ service before? If so, from whom and at what price?
  
  
• What other background information is available about the product/service? E.g., how is the product/service being used, procurement history, problems encountered with past purchases, future purchasing plans?

Background Research

Go to Google.com and use appropriate keywords to get a better understanding of the item. At this stage you should be thinking about helpful keywords that describe the product, both the obvious ones and those not so obvious.

Searching using the obvious keywords can lead you to Web pages mentioning the more obscure words and phrases (e.g., "Plastic Fabrications" instead of "Polyvinyl bags") that you might find useful later at sites such as Thomas Regional and Thomas Register.

Google alone may lead you to one or more companies that can supply the item. If you believe you've found a good company at this point -- after reading product descriptions, etc., at a company Web site -- look that company up in one of the company listing sites mentioned below. Cross-reference using product categories to find competitors. All things equal, zero in on companies that are located within your geographic area.

Consider using the FirstGov search engine, http://www.firstgov.gov, to find relevant information at federal Web pages. (E.g., you might find information written by government buyers about products they've used successfully or not so successfully in the past.)

If you’re wading through a lot of irrelevant information, consider using very specific keywords such as agency specification numbers, if available. For example, if you had a specification such as "Forest Service Interim Specification 5100-318A" you might type "5100-318A" into FirstGov or Google just to see what happens. Perhaps you'll bring up an old FedBizOpps or CBD notice that provides critical background information on the item. Search http://www.fedbizopps.gov for federal procurement and award notices. To search CBD archives, go to http://www.fbodaily.com/cbd/archive/ or http://cbdnet.access.gpo.gov. (FedBizopps replaced the CBD as the official source in early 2002.)

Company Listing Sites

The following company listing sites are free but you will have to register to obtain username/passwords.

• Thomas Register, http://www.thomasregister.com. Great source for manufacturers of hard goods.
• Thomas Regional, http://www.thomasregional.com. Even bigger than Thomas Register and better for finding resellers of commercial products.

Other sources:

• Industry Click, http://www.industryclick.com/supdir.asp.
• VerticalNet.com, http://www.verticalnet.com. Click on the appropriate marketplace, and use the buyer directory at the marketplace.

If still no luck, try associations for the product line you are looking for (e.g., in the case of plastic-based products, you might try the American Plastics Council). Such associations often have member directories, although they tend to be spotty. They may also contain valuable links to other sources for vendors.

Oh, and don’t forget to try that old standby the Yellow Pages, boh online (e.g., http://www.superpages.com) and offline.