According to Harriet Green, Premier Farnell's chief executive: "We haven't been a catalogue company for some time now."
True, the broadline distributor currently does 44% of its business over the web. But it still prints and mails out 100,000s of print catalogues.
"It is the most effective form of direct mail we have," says Green.
But the balance between the traditional catalogue based business and the new online business is shifting faster than even Green thought it would just two years ago.
She now talks of the online business in specific geographic markets having approached "the tipping point".
In Europe, the web currently carries 60% of Farnell's business. In Asia Pacific its 54%. Just the American markets are lagging behind at just under 30% online business.
The move to online has been so dramatic that Green has changed her three year target and she now expects that within three years 70% of Farnell's business will be via the web.
Then Farnell won' be a catalogue company.
"We haven't been that for some time now, but the important thing now is to go beyond the transaction," says Green.
"Anyone can do a really good transactional website," says Green, "the clever bit is to go beyond the transaction, which is where we are going with element14."
According to Green, more than 6,000 customers a day are using the element14 website and design community.
Just 6.5% of these end up at the distributor's transactional websites.
But for Green, today element14 is not about sales, it is about building a community of users which one day could become the distributor's biggest asset.
When that point is reached Farnell will no longer need a catalogue.
The 2009 market downturn could come to represent the beginning of the end game for the electronics catalogue.
But you won't get Harriet Green to admit to that, not exactly anyway.
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