History of IDEA
Follow your calling as far as it leads.
Today we continue to set the standards within the electrical industry, and our products and services now extend across a broad range of B2B and B2C industries. Since we no longer serve as an industry association, we go simply by "IDEA" these days—a fitting name for a company dedicated to innovation in eCommerce.
Significant milestones in IDEA history
- March 1998: NEMA and NAED form joint venture corporation IDEA as a not for profit eCommerce company
- November 1999: Industry Data Warehouse (IDW) and Industry Data Exchange (IDX) become operational
- January 2000: IDEA becomes incorporated in Delaware as a for profit company
- April 2000: IDEA Board of Directors appoints Michael Rioux as first full-time President
- February 2002: B&K Electric Supply is first customer of IDX v2
- March 2002: All IDX customers operational on IDX v2
- March 2003: IDX v2 completes 1 year of operation with a 100% reliability and performance record and a record-setting 2,000,000,000 characters of B2B traffic
- October 2003: IDX sends and receives record 2,800,000,000 characters of B2B traffic
- November 2003: IDEA implements Data Audit and Certification (DAC) program
- November 2003: IDEA initiates Industry Retail Database (IRD) to meet retail chain and 1SYNC™ (Formerly UCCnet) requirements
- December 2004: 150 manufacturers are providing data to IDW and 100 manufacturers have participated in DAC process
- February 2006: IDEA Completes Asset Acquisition of Integrated Software Systems (ISS)
- March 2006: IDX completes US Government evaluation
- April 2006: IDW earns top security rating by Digital Defense, Inc.
- August 2006: IDEA welcomes its 700th customer
