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Strategies & Market Trends : Rande Is . . . HOME -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rande Is who wrote (863)	12/18/1998 8:00:00 AM
From: Wayne Rumball	Respond to of 57584

MLRE - featured on wired last night; Portal of the Rich and Famous by Joe Nickell 4:45 p.m. 17.Dec.98.PST At last, the Web has a gilded portal for the surfing elite who are tired of mixing with the middle-class rabble on Yahoo. Sometime next month millionaire.com will offer the super-rich a place to mingle and shop. "Our intended audience is different because products on the site will lend themselves to ... an affluent audience," said Steve Samblis, president of Fortune Marketing & Capital Consultants, the Longwood, Florida, company behind the site. The company publishes Millionaire Magazine, a monthly glossy with a circulation of 55,000 whose readers cumulatively earn more than US$50 billion a year. Samblis wants to translate that print reach into Web traffic that will make advertisers drool. "We haven't seen a site that lends itself so well to the kind of following that millionaire.com will reach," said Samblis. Fortune Marketing & Capital Consultants CEO Robert White founded The Robb Report, another upscale monthly that features classified ads for Lamborghinis, yachts, and other big-ticket items. Since selling the magazine in 1983, White has traveled the country organizing and participating in auctions of high-priced collectibles. "The Robb Report served an industry that had no soapbox to stand on," said Samblis. "Millionaire.com takes this to the next level." The company plans to generate interest in the site with monthly auctions of rare collectible automobiles, wines, and artwork. The online auctions will occur simultaneously with live auctions at the company's newly built, 20,000-square-foot auction house in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Anyone with a free site membership may participate in online auctions. "Like at a traditional auction, [nonmember] guests will stand behind the ropes," said Samblis. But millionaire.com will hardly be an exclusive club. Samblis said it will perform an important social function. "People can go here to see where they want to be, not just what they can do now. That's an important part of what we're doing," he said. "If we have a young guy or lady who's 16-years-old and entrepreneurial of mind, and they want to someday have a Lamborghini, they can come to the site to see what life could be all about." That 16-year-old will also be able to sign up for a millionaire.com email address and join in chat sessions with the rich and famous at the site.