Local dot.coms learn from online experience

While it isn't likely to be mistaken for Silicon Valley anytime soon, Springfield can claim its share of e-business ventures. The city's pioneering dot-coms, TravelNow.com and Way2Bid.com, are celebrating five years in business this year while new entries such as carvedrock.com and wheelerauto.com are just beginning to get their feet wet.

Here's the latest on some of Springfield's virtual ventures:

TravelNow.com

It was in 1995 that Jeff Wasson realized the need for an online hotel reservations system, an idea that grew to become TravelNow.com.

In 1995, Wasson said, TravelNow.com was the first Internet travel site to allow consumers to make a wireless hotel reservation. Now it is the fifth-largest online travel agency in the world and was recently ranked No. 1 for online hotel bookings by Top9.com, he added.

"The system is still the same: take real-time information from travel suppliers and display it to the customers over the World Wide Web," said Wasson, who is TravelNow.com's chief executive officer.

TravelNow.com offers hotel, car, air, rail, cruise and vacation reservations, making a reservation every 30 seconds. That adds up to a revenue of $3 million for the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2000. Sales for the quarter were up to $45 million.

But before all of the success, TravelNow.com experienced a few bumps in the road.

"It definitely wasn't smooth," Wasson said. "In '95 there was very little talk about the Internet ... very little talk about dot-coms in particular. The market hadn't really exploded."

Also, "it was difficult for us geographically, too, because we were located in Springfield, Missouri, which had even a lower exposure to the technology field," he added. "We were kind of in the wrong place at the right time."

Relocating did cross his mind, but at the time the funds weren't available.

"We've been able to successfully build the company here in Springfield," Wasson said.

He has done so by bringing people in from all over, including San Francisco, Dallas, Phoenix, Ariz., Denver and Connecticut. But Wasson is quick to point out that the majority of the company's 105 employees are from Springfield and that there is neither the need nor the desire to move now.

"We are not geographically limited we get customers from everywhere," he said.

The company already has a relationship in Japan and has recently partnered with a European sales and marketing company, TripWire Travel Systems Ltd., to sell its technology to international partners.

"This company is really acting as an interface, a sales arm, to the next set of international partners," Wasson said. "International expansion has always been on our list of goals."

He added that 18 percent to 20 percent of TravelNow.com's business already is international. "If we could duplicate what we have in a variety of other languages, we think that penetration can be deeper."

Way2Bid.com

The second-largest online business in Springfield, also started in 1995, is Way2Bid.com Inc. It began as a way to simplify the local government and school district purchasing process and was founded by Darren Henderson, director of market development, Joe Herman, training and development, and Erick Burgess, director of technology development.

The three were looking to make it easier for such public entities to receive, submit and accept purchase bids. The result then was a software system to conduct the bidding process.

As of June, Way2Bid made it even easier to utilize the Web-based exchange via Oracle Exchange technology.

"We are continually listening to the people who are using our system to find out what's of value to them and to integrate that into the system," said Debra Risner, director of public relations. "We have tried to mirror the same process that they use in the paper and pencil world as much as possible. Our biggest challenge has been that this is something that's new."

Risner said the company has expanded from four employees in January to 37 presently and are looking to add in the area of customer service.

"The founders love Springfield and basically said, That's why we wanted to get into the Internet because you don't have to be physically located in a certain place.' We really feel like the growth of Way2Bid is a credit to Springfield," Risner said.

"It's also great job creation," added Kay Logsdon, vice president and chief communications officer. "This is a new growth industry for the Springfield economy. It's nice to see how technology is contributing to that."

Carvedrock.com

One of the newest local companies on the dot-com scene is Shawn Somers' carvedrock.com. Somers started the site in early September as a complement to his rock-carving hobby.

"It's a craft that I started five years ago, making Christmas presents and personal gifts," said Somers, whose primary job is regional security manager for Gordman's.

After all the positive responses he'd received on his works, Somers decided to try selling them. "The Web turned out to be a good method of doing that," he said. "It allowed me to turn a hobby into a business."

In its early months, things have been slow for Somers and carvedrock.com.

"It's a struggle to get people to actually order online," he said. "If a customer can hold a product, they understand what it is and they believe in the product ... I think people are afraid to order online."

To combat that fear, Somers uses a third-party accounting service called PayPal, which offers "secure sockets layer transactions."

"You can give them your credit information or your payment information in a secured and guaranteed manner," he said. "It adds a second layer ... a secured layer."

For Somers, so far, the online business is simply a presence for him more of an advertising tool than a sales generator.

"I really use the Web site to bring validity to my product and offer it to a wider audience. At this point it is more of a hobby than a big business for me," he said.

Wheelerauto.com

Another online businesses that is just getting off the ground is wheelerauto.com. Kirk Wheeler, Springfield's Acura/Saturn dealer for the past nine years, went solo and opened his Web site in June. Still in the car sales industry, Wheeler has put a new twist on it by selling over the Internet.

"It's the way of the future," he said. "It's not yet what it's going to be ... people are getting more and more used to buying things over the Internet. It's still not big business in my industry, mainly because it's a high-end product."

In its first five months, wheelerauto.com has sold between 50 and 60 cars a few more than he had anticipated.

Wheeler said he holds about a dozen vehicles on-site at his office, 1960 E. Chestnut, and has more than 100 cars in what he calls his "cyber inventory." His goal is to have 500 cars by next summer and more than 1,000 cars in the future so "people can go there and shop from a bigger inventory than they can find anywhere else without ever having to leave home."

Wheeler acquires these cars from other dealers, both offline and online. He said he buys the majority of them from dealers in the Midwest and gets about 25 percent to 30 percent from other Web sites and cyber lots.

This often means traveling long distances to pick up a vehicle. Wheeler said that the farthest flung locations he's been so far are Charlotte, N.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis and Phoenix. Still, he said, he can usually get a car within 24 hours.

Wheeler said he would eventually like to sell to local dealers. Then, if they're looking for a specific car they can do a search and contact him to pick it up.

"It'd be a good way for local dealerships to acquire vehicles ... without sending someone out of town," he said.

As far as sales goes, most of his business is local. The farthest people have come to purchase, he said, is Kansas City, Joplin and northern Arkansas.

Wheeler is happy with the progress he has made, but agrees with Somers about consumers apprehension of making Internet purchases.

Often the buyer will rely on numerous e-mailed pictures of the car when deciding, and the customer looks it over and test drives before purchasing.

"It's all subject to the vehicle being what it was described to them to be, and if it's not, then they are not bound to take it," Wheeler said. "It is still something new that's going to take time for people to come around to the idea of buying a car that they haven't actually laid their hands on. The old saying a picture is worth a thousand words,' in this business it really is."