This morning, I was once again on the NPIcenter front lines, picking up a few phone calls from viewers who had located the site, interested in finding suppliers of products and services. 

As usual, what they wanted more than anything else, was intelligence. The questions, 'how do you tell' or 'how do you know' while sometimes unspoken, are a key feature of most of these conversations, and over the past 9 years, I've had more of them then I can count.

Today's first enquiry had to do with natural, and preferably organic brands, that could be offered for sale in a massage/welness clinic in the southeast. The viewer was looking for both personal care and supplement products, was interested in perhaps evolving to private label, but in the meantime, wanted to complement the services offered in his chain of clinics with ingestibles and topicals that were of good value and impeccable reputation.

We spoke for about fifteen minutes, some company and brand names were exchanged, and I am hoping I get the 'how did it go' return phone call. The interaction reinforced several things for me: certifications and seals can be confusing, marketing reputation does not necessarily translate to product quality and corporate integrity, it is really difficult to come from outside and 'navigate' this industry, and there is a huge need for 'intelligence' in a non-politically compromised format.

While this inquiry was 100% business to business, the observations above hold as true in the b2c world. No wonder we're so misunderstood....