What's Going Online

With the world's Internet population increasing steadily, paint and coatings companies are strengthening their Internet visibility but have yet to fully embrace selling their products over the Web.

The year 2000 was nothing if not interesting in the dotcom arena. In spite of the fact that many Internet companies with once bright futures were finding themselves sinking fast on Wall Street, the number of U.S. residents with online access rose to more than 153 million by November, marking a 30% increase over the previous year, according Nielsen/Netratings. Combine this with similar and even greater increases in Internet use around the world, and it is not hard to hypothesize that opportunities exist for companies in all industries to utilize the Internet to maximize profit.

With this in mind, the importance of web marketing and e-commerce initiatives in today's business environment has eluded neither industry leaders like Benjamin Moore nor niche companies. In fact, most major manufacturers of paint and coatings have a developed web presence of some sort, and many are defining Internet strategies as inextricable