Blog Archive » Shopatron redefines Vendor Relationships. Ed Stevens of Shopatron is re-intermediating retailers into the online sales process.
Re-intermediation? It seems to go against the grain of what the Internet means to markets. Distributors. Retailers. Can we relate? Imagine being able to relate to vendors -- productively, on mutually agreeable terms -- rather than just paying them money for whatever they're selling, and occasionally giving them "feedback" through surveys that aggregate our "input" inside some impersonal "customer relationship management" (CRM) system.
That's the idea behind VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management. It's the reciprocal of CRM: a toolset for independence and engagement. That is, of independence from vendors and engagement with vendors. VRM is also a development effort -- ProjectVRM -- that we've started at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. There are no VRM tools yet, so we're starting with a blank slate. Main Page - Project VRM.