Companies such as Bethlehem Steel, with annual revenues of more then $4 billion and 14,000 employees, solved this problem in the past by sending faxes to potential buyers of their excess production. Buyers would respond with a bid on the product in which they were interested, and Bethlehem would negotiate with them to determine price and delivery terms.
In 1998, MetalSite was one of the first metal trading exchanges to begin business on the Web. These exchanges offered manufacturers such as Bethlehem an efficient way to reach a larger market for their excess production. By mid-2000, there were more then 200 metal exchanges operating on the Web. These exchanges were following a reintermediation strategy; that is, they were entering the supply chain of the steel industry to provide some added value that had not existed in the supply chain before. However, most industry analysts agreed that there was on need for more than one or two exchanges in the steel industry. In 201, metal trading exchanges sites began to fail.