Sunday, September 19, 1999
Goal: Streamline e-commerce
Agency wants to open door to cyber-store
BY JOHN ECKBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A Cincinnati interactive agency plans to make e-commerce as easy as a quick double-click on a desktop mouse by bringing a one-stop shopping option to firms looking to build a cyber-store.
Mann Bukvic Gatch Partners wants to put some mercy in e-commerce for executives confused about virtual storefronts, credit-card encryption, ready-to-roll Web site architecture, search engine optimization, broad bandwidth and back-end integration.
Basically, the Web can be a cyber-swamp and customers are phantoms for any small business looking to enter the online marketplace, said David S. Bukvic, the agency's president and chief executive officer.
“As far as I know — and the Web is changing so quickly that I may no longer know — we are the only ones out there doing this,” he said. “For most agencies, it's $15,000 to $30,000 for a Web site — although there are a lot of people doing it in their basement for less — and some agencies won't touch it for under $80,000.
“Our Webstore Express is like in the 1950s when GIs were returning home from war. William Levitt started building homes for $5,000 a pop and everybody bought one,” Mr. Bukvic said. “We want to be the Levittown of e-commerce.”
Mr. Bukvic said competition will come from national Internet and Web store providers like Yahoo! and imall, but generally those companies offer rudimentary sites and firms will have to give up customer lists and other transaction data.
The World Wide Web is a world of mystery to many CEOs: merchant acquirers, Web page construction, shopping cart technology, as well as graphic design and marketing initiatives. Essentially, Mann Bukvic Gatch Partners is selling the capabilities of its Web site development staff and experience with merchant acquirers to companies with bricks-and-mortar locations who see the Internet as a new way to woo a new generation of customers.
Regional retailers, small home office entrepreneurs and all business-to-business firms are marketing targets. But instead of having to contract with a half-dozen suppliers and Web service providers for an online retailing presence, they can turn to one agency, called Webstore Express.
Each Web storefront
will cost companies a one-time design fee starting at $3,995 for an online catalog, a shopping cart licensing fee that begins at $479, a one-time transaction set-up of $129 and domain name registration of $85. Monthly maintenance fees are $49.95 for hosting and $29.95 for security.
In short, the door to an e-commerce store costs $5,000 to $7,500 to unlock and about $80 a month to keep open.
The service is being offered through theinteractive Slipstream.com division of the firm, which can be reached at www.webstoreexpress.com, with more sophisticated elements like content and customized e-mails through www.slipstream.com.
Because the company has been involved in Internet-based creative products, graphic, advertising and Web design since 1995, bringing a turnkey Web storefront to other companies was a natural evolution, Mr. Bukvic said. The firm has provided traditional advertising agency strategy and brand development because it was formed in 1960.
When the company launched advertising and marketing for Skipjack Merchant Services in 1998, agency executives saw the potential for a one-stop approach to cyberstores.
That encryption service conceals credit card numbers behind a swamp of digits: Take the number 225 and multiply it by itself 3,000 times and then take the result and multiply it by itself 1,500 times. The figure you get will be greater than the number of atoms in the universe, and it sheds light on the coding involved in one e-commerce credit card transaction utilizing Skipjack.
A customer is more likely to be struck by lightning every day of their life for the next year than have a credit card number stolen by a hacker during an e-commerce transaction managed by Skipjack, officials say.
The business strategy of the Cincinnati agency makes a lot of sense, said Stuart Gibbel, vice president of marketing at Cyber Dialogue, a New York City based online market research and Internet data-based marketing firm created in 1993.
“The most important thing for anyone going online is the marketing,” Mr. Gibbel said. “Small businesses are still going to have to do the marketing. The technology is straightforward. If a product appeals to a certain group, you have to be in that group's discussion board or news group. But it's still true that the best place to have your URL listed in in an article about you. That will drive more traffic than a search engine.”
Experts predict that Internet commerce is a monolithic market for the millennium. They see an e-nuclear explosion cresting above a sunny e-horizon — from an estimated $17 billion in online business-to-business transactions in 1998 to $327 billion by 2002, said Mike Shirer, public relations manager at Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass., market research firm.
Retail sales growth could be robust as well. Forrester predicts that retail sales in 1999 will be about $20.3 billion.
Despite the growth, some companies are in a catch-up mode. Cyber Dialogue pegs the total value of small-business online orders in the last year at $19 billion, up 67 percent from $11.4 billion in 1998. A study this year from the company found that at a time when many large companies are fighting to make a profit with online sales, small firms have met or exceeded their expectations.
About 60 percent of companies that accept orders on their Web sites report sales gains directly attributable to online initiatives that boosted the bottom line by 23 percent of total company sales.
In other words, the Web puts a typhoon wind into many small-business sails. The number of small businesses that placed online orders jumped 95 percent in the past year, the survey from Cyber Dialogue determined.
Despite those startling numbers, a report from Cutter Consortium of Arlington, Ma., has found that the majority of businesses — 65 percent — still have no e-commerce strategy.
Webstore Express is building Webstores in the apparel, entertainment and furniture industries and for nonprofit organizations. It is expected to turn a profit by the fourth quarter of 2001, Mr. Bukvic said.
“It will start to accrue quickly after years two and three as monthlies begin to add up. It will take on some real velocity,” he said. “And it has long-term growth potential.”
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