Trading should start on Monday or Tuesday at the latest.
Just some thoughts...
I think we have all heard the stats that Internet E-commerce in North America will grow from $48-billion in 1998 to more than $1.3-trillion by the year 2003 so there is money out their to be made and huge growth potential in the E-commerce area. There have been a few companies in Canada (e.g Gala-Bari, GAB - CDNX) that have attempt to produce so called "Internet Malls". These companies just take existing E-commerce Websites, such as Amazon.com, and provide links to them on their fancy Website. I have always thought that was one of the worst business plans around because anyone can just go directly to Amazon.com's Website to buy the product and don't have to go to the "Internet Mall".
However what SCI is doing appears to be completely different from the other so called "Internet Malls" put out by companies such as GAB. I had the pleasure of talking with Mark Brown from SCI to get a good idea of what the company is doing and what some of their plans are.
The Mycitymarket.com E-commerce website in Vancouver, B.C is just the first step. The company plan on quickly expanding Mycitymarket.com into the rest of Canada and the United States and beyond. For each city a separate Website will be provided but the Mycitymarket.com brand name will be used. They are planning on expanding to Seatle right away.
The company is presently arranging a equity offering of $2-million to finance marketing and expansion into additional markets. The equity offering will be at a price near last Friday's close and go largely to insiders/connected individuals.
Here is the business idea...
mycitymarket.com
In every large city the are hundreds of mid-sized retail businesses that want to sell their products over the internet but they don't have the technical skills to create and constantly update an e-commerce Website, or the ability to process Internet orders. For a initial fee, Mycitymarket.com will build and maintain a company's Webpage, and process all Internet orders for the company. In addition to the initial set-up fee, Mycitymarket.com will also get a commission on all sales made at the website. Although I don't have exact figures on commission I believe it is approximately 8-9% of all the Internet sales.
Instead of hosting separate Webpages for each company, Mycitymarket.com puts all the companies from one city together in one one convenient website. Each retailer on this website has their own unique sections and look. Hosting all the companies under one site and one brand name appears to be a good business plan for several reasons.
1. It makes it easy for a local residence to find local companies since they are all grouped together in one location.
2. With mycitymarket.com you can shop at any or all of the merchants and enjoy one checkout, kind of like a department store.
3. A large percentage of the public is hesitant to do online transactions unless the online company is well known. For example, I know several people that will buy books online from Chapters.ca since it is a well known name but will not buy online from small online businesses because they don't know if the orders are secure and if they can trust the company. As mycitymarket.com expands and becomes a well known brand name people will be far more likely to place online orders with the companies mycitymarket.com host compared to some small local merchant trying to host a page themselves. Merchants will hopefully see the advantage of mycitymarket.com brand name and ease of use and decide to let mycitymarket.com host their page and process their orders instead of trying to do it themselves. In the last three months alone, Mycitymaket.com has signed up 14 merchants for the Vancouver, BC Webpage so it appears the merchants to see the advantage of this type of set-up.
So far I have not found any other company in Canada or the U.S that offers this type of local online shopping centre to mid-size retail companies so SCI has the first to market advantage. However to make any company successful it is necessary to have the right people behind the company. According to the bios I have seen it appears that all the people behind SCI and mycitymarket.com are very experienced with solid business backgrounds
Mark Brown's focus has been on managing public companies. He has been involved in over $300-million worth of mergers, acquisitions and financings in the past five years. His varied business experience has centred on analyzing and investing in projects through Pacific Opportunity Company Ltd., a private venture capital company. Pacific Opportunity is a major shareholder of Spartacus.
Mark Brown's focus has been on managing public companies. He has been involved in over $300-million worth of mergers, acquisitions and financings in the past five years. His varied business experience has centred on analyzing and investing in projects through Pacific Opportunity Company Ltd., a private venture capital company.
Mr. Schade has over 20 years of experience providing integrated design, marketing, advertising communications and public relations services to technology and emerging growth clients.
Sodi Hundal, the founder and president of Mycitymarket.com, has spent 10 years working with retailers and evaluating their needs. He identified the need for mid-sized retailers to be part of the Web and developed a plan which keeps their costs low by outsourcing the technical and marketing aspects of e-tailing
Mr. Elliott started his computer engineering career with Atomic Energy of Canada and then joined BC Tel just as the computer communications industry was gaining momentum. Mr. Elliott pioneered the use of minicomputers in the telephone industry and in 1975 formed KEA Systems Ltd. KEA developed software technology that connected PCs to mainframe computer systems before most people had even thought of the idea. KEA (now Attachmate Canada Inc.) is a leading software communications company which Mr. Elliott and his partners built into a multinational success story.
John Brown has led a distinguished career in finance, mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Brown arranged the public shell company and financing of Pacific Insight Electronics Ltd. which recently announced record quarterly profits. Mr. Brown has also been a director of the investment portal Stockscape.com since its inception in 1996
Best Regards
KEITH |
