Moving Into High Gear

In February, we launched a new magazine, Power Transmission Engineering (PTE). While most of you have probably already seen it, those of you who haven’t can read the first issue online at powertransmission.com.

PTE is to the broader power transmission market what Gear Technology has been to the gear industry for the past 23 years.

As with Gear Technology, our goal with PTE is to educate and inform. To that end, we’ll feature the highest-quality technical articles, combined with features, news and other information designed to help power transmission product consumers and users save money, be more productive and produce higher-quality products. But PTE goes beyond Gear Technology: in addition to gears, we’ll also cover bearings and brakes, couplings and clutches, sensors and speed reducers. In short, all the types of components that help make things move, and which many of you already make, buy and use.

This is not completely new territory for us. We’ve been involved with this broader market for the past 10 years as publishers of the online buyers guide at powertransmission.com. Since 1997, powertransmission.com has grown to become one of the most visited and well respected industrial resources on the Internet. The site now receives more than 80,000 USER SESSIONS per month. Real people from all over the world use it every day to find suppliers of power transmission products.

We process dozens of sales leads per day for our powertransmission.com visitors and advertisers, including many of you who are readers of Gear Technology. Requests come for all types of products, and we forward those requests to the appropriate companies. Sometimes the requests are small--like the one from a recent visitor who needed a power take-off for his tractor. Sometimes the requests are quite large--like the one from a visitor who needed to overhaul or replace the gearboxes for a coal pulverizing plant. Sometimes our visitors are just in the design stage, looking for components they can build into their finished products. Other times, they’re end users who have an immediate need to repair or expand their factory, assembly line or industrial plant.

Over the past 10 years, we’ve found that the people using the site wanted and needed additional information about these products, so we’ve added short editorial items like the news sections, which we update every day with products, calendar items and industry news.

But our visitors needed more in-depth information. Power Transmission Engineering was the next logical step.

There are, of course, other magazines serving the power transmission marketplace, but none of them with the depth or quality of information we publish. If you find the information in Gear Technology important and of interest--and many of you have told us you have saved every issue--we’re confident you’ll also like and need Power Transmission Engineering.

The February issue of PTE was a digital-only issue, and we’ll be using the same electronic format for the rest of this year. But two issues--April and August--will also be printed magazines, delivered to 15,000 buyers of power transmission products, mostly in the United States--many of the same people who have already used powertransmission.com.

We’re using this combined print-and-electronic strategy for a number of reasons. With powertransmission.com, our roots in this market have always been digital. Also, publishing issues online allows us to hold our advertising costs down while still allowing us to demonstrate to the marketplace the types of articles and information we’ll publish. But at the same time, we understand the power of print, and we expect that by this time next year, PTE will be a print publication every issue.

Of course, much of that depends on you and your reaction to the new magazine.

If you think you can use this kind of in-depth information on bearings, motors, clutches, couplings and similar products, please sign up for a free subscription at www.powertransmission.com/subscribe.htm. If you’re in the USA, Canada or Mexico, you can choose either the electronic or printed issues. Subscribers outside North America can sign up for the digital version.

Also, if you manufacture or sell power transmission products and you’re interested in reaching serious buyers, then you can download the media kit at www.powertransmission.com/mediakit07.pdf. Or call our sales manager, Ryan King, at (847) 437-6604. powertransmission.com and Power Transmission Engineering provide you with a print-and-electronic advertising combination that’s aimed specifically at your customers.

Finally, if you have technical articles, feature story ideas or news that you think might be appropriate for either of our magazines or our websites, please call us or send an e-mail to publisher@geartechnology.com. We’re interested in anything that helps educate the industry, and we’d like to help you share your story. If we’re reaching your customers and potential customers, your articles can help them be better informed buyers. A sales engineer is too expensive to be an educator. Besides, that’s our job.

Michael Goldstein,
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief