What a journey! Looking back on 30 years, celebrating the growth and dedication from the founders to creating a brilliant global community.
Back in 1995, the idea of an online inventory sharing platform was brought to life, bringing global distributors together to form a growing community. In 1996, Peter Annis and Gary Jenkins created the first version of BearingNet available on floppy disks which were sent to customers via mail. Wanting to spread the word about BearingNet, Peter and Gary hosted their first public demonstration of the platform at a Barcelona Conference and BearingNet became available online.
From 1998 onwards, the platform saw new developments and updates including, a new quotes system, the Wanted page, the automatic stock upload, an advanced search and much more. BearingNet hit new highs of 1,000,000 parts listed on the site in 2001, then reaching 2,000,000 parts in 2003. In 2005, the platform reached 950 members and Peter and Gary held their first User Meeting in Prague, with 88 people.
By then, BearingNet had been working with placement students and in 2007, Nicola Beer (now Managing Director) started working as a placement student from the University of Hertfordshire. In 2008, Chris Howard (now Commercial Director) started as a placement student too. With over 1,800 distributors on BearingNet at the time, the first edition of Best Bits was released in 2014. By 2015, Nicola and Chris were leading the sales department.
Following the growth of BearingNet over the last 20 years, the Manufacturers’ Advertising Platform (MAP) was introduced in 2016, providing promotional and networking opportunities to SME manufacturers. Continuing with the mindset of helping businesses to grow, BearingNet’s sister company, FluidPowerNet, was launched for the hydraulic and pneumatic industry in 2018.
Learn about the Manufacturers’ Advertising Platform here.
Find out more about FluidPowerNet here.
After 25 years, Peter retires, Nicola becomes Managing Director and Tom Irving becomes the IT and Development Manager. In 2020, when COVID-19 hit, factory shutdowns and market shortages led to a huge reliance on BearingNet.
In 2023, BearingNet hosted the 20th User Meeting in Berlin, with 500+ attendees, making it the biggest meeting ever hosted. In 2024, Fasten.it (a fastener and fixing network based in Italy) joined the BearingNet family alongside FluidPowerNet, and then hosted the first Fasten.it User Meeting in Rome in October 2025. BearingNet User Meetings continue to grow, and the very-first South American User Meeting will take place between 30th September – 2nd October 2026 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
You can find out more about #UMRIO26 by clicking here.
We would also like to say a massive thank you to the people that have been a part of BearingNet since the beginning, supporting us through the past 30 years. As a team at BearingNet, we are always thinking ahead and continuously looking at ways to develop, modernise, and enhance the platform for our members. Our aim is to make BearingNet the best tool it can be and we look forward to what the future holds!
If you have any suggestions or ideas that you think would benefit the BearingNet community, please email sales@bearingnet.net we would love to hear them.
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