E-commerce - Big Interest, Little Action

"They were very accommodating," he says. "If they want the [return] business, they'll do a good job." Esser says the quality from some of his regular printers had been slipping, so he used 58K.com to find other printers and shake his local providers up a bit.

"It's made my job easier," he says.

Online supply sites, like PrintNation.com, also seem poised to make in-plants' jobs easier. But many shops have yet to try them. They say they are already locked into contracts with suppliers or, in the case of large operations like Allstate, they order such high volumes that they already get better discounts than the online suppliers offer.