The History of IMALL -> from IMAL investor relations
by: kwd1ckens 976 of 981
Founded in October 1994, iMALL™, Inc. launched one of the world's first Internet commerce destinations located at www.imall.com. Over the last four years, www.imall.com has established itself as the leading Internet shopping mall with more than 1,600 hosted storefronts, new merchants joining daily and more than 30 million hits and millions of shoppers each month.
From 1994 to 1996, iMALL attracted businesses of all sizes wishing to establish online stores. iMALL created commerce-enabled Web sites for these early merchants through iSTORE™, its proprietary, turnkey suite of e-commerce tools and services, as well as aggregating this increasing mass of early e-commerce leaders at www.imall.com. Along the way, iMALL was able to attract some of America's leading brands, including Hanes and Coca-Cola, to join the mall's cooperative efforts as "anchor tenants" to drive shoppers to the site.
In January 1998, Richard Rosenblatt, one of the Company's original three co-founders, was appointed Chairman and CEO of iMALL. That year also saw a ground breaking Internet Sweepstakes with AT&T that attracted more than one million entries, a joint shopping center with AT&T WorldNet® and the growth of an up scale Internet shopping area, iMALL's Park Avenue Center, featuring toy retailer FAO Schwarz, Disney Collectibles and Barnes & Noble.
The financial community has validated this strategy, as the Company subsequently received $20 million in private financing. Internet industry recognition of the Company's site and overall strategies has come in the form of top ratings from Lycos Top 5%, TopTenLinks and the All-Internet Shopping Directory, among others.
During iMALL's first three years, the Internet grew from a handful of academic users to millions of mainstream consumers. In response, iMALL rolled out a series of increasingly more over arching commercial platforms, culminating in its 1998 deals with major ISPs, such as Verio Web Hosting and credit card merchant companies, such as Cardservice International, to offer turnkey e-commerce packages to more than 200,000 small to mid-sized businesses, while maintaining its strong co-marketing connection to Fortune 500 companies.
iMALL is now well positioned for the 21st Century as a leader in electronic commerce- a field expected to generate revenues exceeding one trillion dollars by the year 2002 (Activemedia), eclipsing direct response TV, radio and eventually even direct mail. The Internet is the perfect arena for commerce, and this is something that iMALL has recognized-and capitalized upon-since the dawn of the medium.
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Posted: Dec 29 1998 11:34AM EST as a reply to: Msg 967 by kwd1ckens
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