In the course of tracking down so many seriously obscure parts, Whitlock amassed a mountain of catalogues and bulletins, organizing and cross-referencing them in a set of huge, black binders. Likewise his Rolodex grew and grew, listing vital contact who could either supply any part or tell him who could. Briefly Whitlock took a tour through corporate America, but he was appalled to find himself surrounded by sleazy financial dealings and the pressure to cut corners. And he quickly burnt out on managing inventories, supervising employees, and flying as often as fifty times a year. So in 1995 he once again struck out on his own - not in his car this time, but in a spare room in the home on his wooded suburban lot.

Never was a gasket salesman so wired. He bought two cell phones, lashed a beeper to his belt, and purchased an automatic fax machine to broadcast one hundred single-page advertisements overnight to carefully targeted prospects. Whitlock's faxes boasted of his experience with "rush jobs," his access to "oddball, hard-to-find parts," and his purported standing as a "worldwide supplier to industry." He dubbed himself "the Seal Man," adding a likeness of himself to his stationery to give customers a feeling for the fellow on the other end of the fax. He also hired his sister to work part-time from her home phoning prospects who had responded to one of his faxes. Then Whitlock added e-mail, eventually installing a program that forwarded any messages containing a few promising key words (such as "quote" or "order") to his pager for instant call-back. He scanned his entire twent-four-page catalogue into a site on the World Wide Web and notified the major searching services to include his Web address under "seals" and "gaskets."

The truth is that no amount of technology assures a profitable connection, but it surely helps to create a potential selling opportunity. As inquiries arrived by phone, fax, and e-mail, Whitlock dug into those old notebooks years in the making. Motion Industries needs a part for a Bulgarian-made press. A giant motor at Carolina Power & Light keeps catching fire because no one can replace a persistently leaky oil seal. A call from GM, another from TVA, another from Smucker's. At such moments Whitlock flipped through his golden Rolodex or reached back into his years of experience hanging out on shop floors. When he tracked down a part he arranged for its shipment by overnight express to his two-car garage. There, his wife, Rita, connected to him by two-way radio, switched the incoming product into a new box with an invoice, dropped in a "Seal Man" refrigerator magnet, and immediately sent the package out. By 1997 he was doing $1 million worth of business a year, and with costs so low his gross margins averaged about 60 percent - a sum representing the value of the know-how he brought to every order.

And his growth had only begun. Whitlock's niche expanded with the spreading World Wide Web, bringing in customers from around the globe. "Last week I had inquiries or order from Indonesia, Dubai, Singapore, Sweden, Trinidad, Chile, Mexico, and several others," he told me at one point. Technology also expanded his reach for supply beyond his old set of black binders. By 1998 he was buying from vendors in Germany, Venezuela, Ireland, Australia, and Austria. He forged a close relationship with an Indian entrepreneur with whom he established a small, captive manufacturing operation - all via e-mail. "A guy right around the corner from me never heard of me till he saw me on the Internet," Whitlock said, sitting at his built-in plywood desk, his wife packing boxes a few yards away, the UPS truck in his driveway, his cell phone warbling.

Whitlock's success enabled him and Rita to spend a lot of time in a Florida vacation home without leaving the business behind. He scanned his Rolodex and his industrial directories into his laptop. He mounted a post over the transmission hump in his truck to keep the laptop within reach as he drove. He forwarded all his calls. And when an order could not wait for repackaging in his garage, he simply arranged a drop shipment straight from his supplier to his customer.

He was the ultimate middleman. He added value by knowing where to find the gasket equivalent of a needle in the marketplace equivalent of a haystack, creating a profitable storefront in the new village square that is the world.