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What's Cool

@ the metal mart

Reigning over vertical markets is what every niche enterprise dreams of. Now, the new e-opportunity is to create a vertical marketplace. Or, an on-line mart which buyers and sellers for a product visit in search of suppliers and customers, respectively. Setting up a focused digital bazaar of this kind can immediately open up revenue streams by way of commissions from sales-and what sales they can be if you're Michael Levin, who has set up an e-Biz venture, named e-steel (www.e-steel.com). After all, steel deals can run into millions of dollars, which makes the commission that e-steel charges quite lucrative.

The lure for the world's steel-makers and steel-buyers is obvious. Shoppers for intermediate and finished steel products, for instance, use the virtual mart to get the best prices from manufacturers around the globe. As for the sellers, they can now access global markets without having to move physically out of their locations and invest in creating marketing infrastructure in other countries. The crucial role that e-steel plays is in ensuring the reputation of the companies-by asking both buyers and sellers to submit details about their track-record, their financials, and independent verification of their product quality, and having them appraised by experts. e-Steel is not only demonstrating the mettle of metal marts on the Net, but also showcasing the future of the digital marketplace.

-Sanjiv Rana

CUSTOMISING CONTROL

In real life, self-service may only be a convenience. On the Net, innovative e-Businesspersons are turning it into a major benefit for customers. That's what the Chicago-based entrepreneur Brad Keywell's starbelly.com is counting on with its unique offering. The company specialises in customising merchandise for buyers-500 mugs with a corporate logo or 4 T-Shirts with a screen-printed photograph of the family, for instance.

The service comes with a twist: customers can design their own products, using the enormous menu of design tools and pre-loaded visuals, preview their creations on-screen, and order only when they're sure. That lowers the chance of dissatisfaction with the finished product. But, more important, it has cleaned up Starbelly's supply chain. Other companies in the same business have to scour catalogues, find suppliers, create a prototype, play it back to the customer, make modifications, and only then make and ship the products-all of which can take upto 6 weeks. Starbelly has cut that time-and, along with it, the costs-to a fourth. All by giving the customer control.

-Sanjiv Rana

ISP INNOVATION

Being a free Internet Service Provider (ISP) is no longer innovative in Netspace. But peoplepc.com, a San Francisco-based start-up headed by venture-capital veteran Nick Grouf, is different. First, the service is not free. But what peoplepc.com is giving its customers for $24.95 a month is not just a free state-of-the-art PC, which is to be replaced every 3 years. It is the opportunity to shop at a huge array of on-line stores at enormous discounts. While it is too soon to tell whether this will prove reason enough for new surfers to connect through Peoplepc, or for existing surfers to switch ISPs, these discounts are, actually, at the heart of the business model with which the e-Biz venture operates.

For, its real source of revenues is commissions from the purchases made by its subscribers from the Web-retailers with whom it has forged partnerships. But why are these e-tailers willing to share their spoils with Peoplepc? That's where Grouf has strategised adroitly. The starting-point of his calculations is that it takes an e-tailer an average of $150 to snare a new customer in the marketspace. That's the money that on-line stores are shelling out per purchasing customer at present when they advertise on the most popular Websites in a bid to attract traffic. But an alliance with Peoplepc in order to get access to the latter's customer-base turns out to be a much cheaper proposition even after the discounts and the commissions are thrown in. And brings profit-power to Peoplepc.

-Hasnain Zaheer

SERVICE SELLER

What eBay (www.ebay.com) is to products, e-Lance (www. elance.com) plans to be to services. The logic is flawless: there are millions of people with specialised skills looking for buyers for their services. Likewise, there are millions of individuals and organisations who need such services on a freelance or assignment basis. Why not create a virtual mart for them to meet?

That's just what former Wall Street denizens Beerud Sheth and Srini Anomolu have done with e-Lance. From getting an illustration to having a jingle composed for a commercial, there's no service that cannot be offered-or accessed-through e-Lance. The pricing, typical of the Net, is auction-driven, with e-Lance doing the match-making of bids to buy and sell.

Like other e-auctions, the venture will charge sellers a fee. In today's service economy, e-Lance should thrive.

-Hasnain Zaheer

THE EYEBALL GAME

Few e-Biz ventures are as innovative as those focused offerings aimed at attracting eyeballs and serving them up to advertisers. The improvisations are sharply focused on creating a source of specialised data which will meet a unique need for customers, forcing them to return again and again. And while the fundamental ware on offer has to be data, it is what this data can deliver that is giving the opportunity for creating-and meeting-unusual needs.

Take Curt Anderson, whose Webusiness, selectsmart.com, is an interactive-surfers ask, the Website pulls out answers from its database-guide for customers to pick the best product, given their requirements. The idea is to target those potential buyers of unusual goods and services-dogs,mortgages, or garden equipment, for instance-who are neither clear about their precise needs, nor aware of where to shop for the best deal. Thus, a potential dog-buyer, for instance, can detail her preferences, and then find out what the ideal breed for her would be. And the specificity of the products on which surfers seek purchasing help has made it a hotpsot for advertising for manufacturers of those products.

For a similar innovation aimed at grabbing eyeballs, turn to ancestry.com, set up by Curt Allen. Taking advantage of copious family records in the US to build an extensive database of genealogies, both ventures enable people to enter their family names and other related information, and then trace their family trees back through generations and centuries. What could have been merely a fascinating service in the real world has become a potent business-venture on the Net because the millions of people visiting these sites are customers for both advertisements as well as related products like genealogy-CDs. If building communities for commerce is your target, these are great role-models.

-Sanjiv Rana

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