As I was driving my kids to school this morning in Chicago, I passed a local Walgreens bearing a large digital sign that proudly flashed a message something like: "Get your H1N1 vaccine -- available today." Two months ago, there was a mad rush on H1N1 vaccine in Chicago. The vaccine was impossible to get unless you had a connection (which in Chicago is usually only one campaign contribution away), or wanted to wait in line for half a day. But now it seems there's so much of it that the government and health authorities can't give it away (despite the fact that only a minority of the U.S. population is vaccinated, including many high-risk groups). H1N1 vaccine succumbed to the classic bullwhip effect: demand spiked, supply could not keep up, and many early potential consumers ended up disappointed. Yet only a couple of months after peak demand, we're awash in excess capacity (much of which could expire before we have a chance to use it). This is very similar to the bullwhip effect that Caterpillar is preparing for with its suppliers as orders begin to ramp back up this year. And it won't just be suppliers that struggle to meet demand; commodity prices potentially will spike as well, paving a volatile path throughout the year.

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Earlier this week, my better half did an interview with Fox Business on the metals markets. While the primary audience was most certainly more of a financial crowd, the insights Lisa shared are highly applicable to metals buyers looking at where the markets are headed. Check out Lisa's insights below:



I’m hoping both Spend Matters and MetalMiner become more involved in video going forward. Whether it’s through major networks or independently -- or both -- I think video is turning into a more acceptable and useful medium for organizations to quickly come up to speed on relevant spend topics.

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Lisa Reisman, my trusty confidante, business partner, and wife, will be talking metals on Foxbusiness.com today at 12:15 EST (Lisa is also a Spend Matters contributor). Her live segment promises to cover a range of metals market trends, including which metals to track as a gauge of the overall recovery (and which suppliers and distributors she likes in each area). As we were chatting about the interview over the weekend, it became fairly clear that, regardless of the metal in question, producers and suppliers that have embraced innovation and made tough business decisions (e.g., shutting down less productive lines/facilities) are those most consistently poised for the greatest success in the coming years. Going beyond Wall Street's view of the metals market, these very suppliers are those who will probably make the best supply partners as well (look for Lisa to share some names in the segment). She also considers quite a number of other topics critical to getting out on the proverbial metals spend table as we head into 2010.

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Jason is the Spend Management Boy Wonder, but his wife, Lisa Reisman, is the Woman of Steel, the force behind Metal Miner, the online resource for sourcing and information on global metals markets. The following are Spend Matters posts on Metal Miner throughout 2009. Enjoy. --Joy

Metal Miner IndX (SM) -- A Free Global Metals Pricing Index Launches

China, North Korea, and Vanadium -- World Trade and Weapons Proliferation Supply Watch

Is the Recession Good or Bad for Sustainability?

Technorati Crowns MetalMiner a Top 100 Green Blog

When it Comes to Big Steel, the More Things Change, the More They ...

Procurement and Commodity Prices Meet Wall Street -- What’s an ETF and Why Should I Care?

Live, From the Rare Earth Metals Summit

Not Water Under the Bridge: The Supplier Lessons of SIGG's Aluminum and BPA Experience

MetalMiner, Spend Matters' sister publication focused on metals sourcing, turned two today. Three years younger than Spend Matters, the site is nonetheless following in the virtual steps of this digital rag, quickly catching up with and overtaking established publications and media sites in its sector. Looked at from a traffic perspective compared with other procurement and sourcing blogs, MetalMiner is now the second most trafficked new media site besides Spend Matters in the sector. But our sister-publication is not gunning to capture a generic slice of the procurement and supply chain market. No, they’re going after an underserved but huge niche -- meeting the market intelligence and content needs of metals buyers, specifically.

These folks crave such things as detailed price forecasts and expert commodity analysis rather than "I told you so" alerts about price movements in one direction or another. They’re looking for edge, insight and opinion. And they're also looking for proprietary (yet free) content such as the daily global metals pricing available by registering for MetalMiner IndX. MetalMiner provides both insight and industry color in spades from a "voice of the buyer" perspective that is lacking in traditional publications and subscription services, many of which have served as mouthpieces for producers and distributors for decades. Just as Spend Matters is written by a collection of folks with an edge, opinion and knowledge of sourcing and supply chain, MetalMiner is authored in a similar voice by metals sourcing and trading experts.

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Due to an administrative error outside of our control, this article was not crawled properly by a search engine earlier this morning; we are reposting in its original form for proper indexing (albeit with a shorter title that fits in our title window).

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Late last week, United announced that it might place a substantial order (as much as $10 billion worth for 150 new aircraft) with Boeing or Airbus by this fall. Boeing is looking to use a winner-take-all negotiation strategy, hoping to gain overall relationship leverage -- and the best possible pricing -- from Boeing and Airbus by committing all of their spend to one supplier. For more details, check out The Wall Street Journal's write-up.

In our view, this move could go down in the annals of contrarian thinking as one of the most astute sourcing moves of the year. Why? For a number of reasons, but primarily because United is thinking ahead of the market, getting past the current bumps and bruises that have depressed aircraft orders. Which also happen to be among the very maladies that could give them outstanding pricing with Boeing and Airbus, both of which are more desperate for commercial orders than at any other point in recent years.

In addition, we believe this represents a prescient contrarian move for a number of other reasons which we'll touch on below:

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The reason we personally bought a Mac has nothing to do with green. For me (Lisa) it's about getting lean (e.g. reducing set-up and cycles times if we use a manufacturing analogy) and of course practicing what I preach on MetalMiner (I had to have a metal aluminum Mac). For Jason, it more closely services the two gears his body supports -- fast and stop (he is either running himself ragged or sleeping and has no time for anything in the middle).

When it comes to sustainability, we probably do okay (not great) as a couple in terms of our overall carbon footprint because we drive only one car and take public transportation whenever possible. After all, changing consumption patterns -- in both the home and the office -- has a much more drastic impact when it comes to sustainability issues than simply modifying how a product is made. But we still suppose Apple is still to be commended for getting more serious about tracking and measuring sustainability throughout its extended supply chain.

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I used to work for someone who once said, "if you aren't generating controversy, you probably aren't saying anything worthwhile". I was almost fired from Andersen when I jointly penned this column with my now husband, Jason Busch. My boss at the time took the heat and argued with the head of a $50m practice (who wanted me fired) that sometimes people need to say what others don't want to hear. At the time I co-wrote the article, marketplaces and exchanges were proving as popular as tulips in 17th century Holland. But we weren't all buying the bulbs, so to speak. Even though many at my firm were getting rich selling millions of dollars of technology strategy, integration and implementation deals, Jason and I called like we saw it in the now defunct The Industry Standard and said the things would crash and burn. And they ultimately did.

To this date, I continue to believe that controversy -- when warranted -- is a good thing. You should never be afraid to speak your mind, just as Jason does on this blog. As the co-lead editor and author of Spend Matters affiliate blog, MetalMiner, I've witnessed controversy continue to follow me. And as Contributing Editor to Spend Matters, I've watched controversy follow my husband. (though I like to think I help temper the rhetoric and challenge the logic). But there are some arguments and debates that I can't resist getting into myself.

Last week, my business partner and I got into a heated email and comment exchange with two executives from Nucor -- we didn't post one of the emails from the CEO -- who strongly disagreed with our position that advocated policies that are popular with consumers of metal but unpopular with producers. To me, this entire incident, which I would encourage you to read about via this link, represents everything that new media has to offer -- two way dialog and debate, potentially fewer hidden agendas. We try not to hide behind the "objective guise" of trade publications, if you can call them objective. Rather, bloggers with deep domain knowledge representing other constituents, in our case metals buyers and traders, are getting into the debate without taking what the producers say as gospel.

It's a brave new world. And hopefully it will spark some new debate and awareness.

- Lisa Reisman

Jason Busch and Lisa Reisman (Metal Miner/ Aptium Global) jointly authored this post.

ImportGenius (hat-tip Ryder Daniels) has caused quite a stir in the past week. The web-based information service claims to provide "timely, detailed shipment data for every container that enters the United States" to provide information to "importers, exporters, entrepreneurs, freight forwarders, bankers, private investigators, foreign factories" and others. The site suggests that some might use it to "keep tabs on competitors by “gaining access to records on nearly every container that entered the United States from 2006 to the present". This information can provide "access to lists of all of your competitors' suppliers and all of your suppliers' U.S. customers." Companies also might use the data to detect if their suppliers are shipping counterfeit or grey market products into the US.

But how ingenious is this really? The site appears to be aggregating information that is already somewhat publicly available or can become available if a company follows the procedures outlined here. On the other hand, ImportGenius also appears to have a very easy to use interface (which is something we can’t always say about applications made available to the public by the government). They're also very good at marketing it, we’ll give them that.

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