Great idea Nathan. I think a lot of vendors play it too conservatively. Setting their business apart from the competition is a necessity to be successful these days. Sitting back and passively hoping to get business or conventional sales are not going to maximize their potential especially in a forum setting. I think many vendors don't realize that actively posting is far better than running a banner ad on the site. Of course it does take more effort.

I need to send more info to my vendors as well to get them more involved in the forum. I recently installed (yet another:)) hack that lets me send them a pm instead of an email. I prefer communicating through the site as much as possible with the members and vendors. The hack basically does the same thing the email member function does in the adminCP. I have my vendors in their own usergroup so sending info using the adminCP system is a snap.