In 1998, MetalSite was one of the first metal trading exchanges to begin doing 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 wear more than 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 ad not existed in the supply chain before. However, most industry analysts agreed that there was no need for more than one or two exchanges in the steel industry. In 2001, metal trading exchange sites began to fail.