Vancouver entrepreneur enters E-commerce
WENDY STUECK
British Columbia Bureau (Globe & Mail)
Tuesday, June 1, 1999
Vancouver -- Vancouver property entrepreneur Terry Hui
doesn't dawdle.
In the fall of 1995, Mr. Hui took less than an hour to decide to
purchase the company that would become Vancouver-based
Multiactive Software Inc.
Since then, Mr. Hui has spent heavily on staff and research,
taken the venture public on the Canadian Dealing Network and
snapped up two competing companies in Multiactive's core
market of customer management software.
Today, Multiactive is moving into electronic commerce by
launching Entice, a program designed to help medium-sized
companies blend their traditional operations with on-line
activities such as sales and market research.
Mr. Hui says the new product gels with the vision that grabbed
him when he first came across Maximizer, Multiactive's
flagship contact management software. Launched in 1987,
Maximizer had a loyal user base but a troubled corporate past.
Mr. Hui saw beyond the problems.
"When I saw that product, I saw the potential of helping
businesses generate more sales, using the Internet," Mr. Hui
says. "The new program we are releasing materializes a lot of
that vision."
To date, Mr. Hui's vision has been most evident in high-rise
towers. As president and chief executive officer of Concord
Pacific Group Inc., Mr. Hui, 35, is spearheading the massive
Concord Pacific Place development on the north shore of False
Creek in downtown Vancouver.
Concord Pacific is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, but is
most closely identified with its Hong Kong-based backers who
include billionaire Li Ka-shing.
But the well-connected Mr. Hui has always had a soft spot for
technology. Born in Hong Kong, Mr. Hui went to university in
California, where he obtained an undergraduate degree in
physics and a master of science degree in electrical
engineering.
Since moving to Vancouver in 1985, he's put a high-tech stamp
on a number of real estate developments, including suites at
Concord Pacific Place that are wired for high-speed Internet
access.
Through Multiactive, Mr. Hui is broadening his reach. Its
subsidiaries include Multiactive Education Inc., which provides
on-line educational content, and List Warehouse Inc., an Internet
list-brokering service. In the three months ended Feb. 28,
Multiactive reported profit of $400,000 on sales of $5.4-million.
The newest Maximizer version, 5.0, includes E-commerce
features that let users create their own Web sites and conduct
business on-line. But it's designed for single users and small
workgroups.
Entice is geared toward medium-sized companies. It costs
$25,000 for up to 10 licences, with each additional licence
ranging in price between $500 and $1,000.
The new program will be up against dozens of rivals that
promise to take the hassle out of E-commerce. But Brent
Halverson, who helped launch Maximizer 11 years ago and
became president of Multiactive Software in May, says Entice
has been designed to do more than just take orders.
Features include generating automatic responses to customer
E-mails, "pushing" customers to relevant sections of a
company's Web site and providing company-wide access to
customer information. |
