There are many ways to start a business, but none as thrilling as buying one from an online auction house.
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Without some corrective action, spam threatens to turn e-mail into one gigantic electronic garbage delivery service
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Terry Rhode has spent most of his life getting ready for success. As a child growing up in Saskatoon, Sask., he honed his “can-do” edge. At the tender age of 10 he began working for his parents’ family run business, painting scaffold and cleaning brick, for a whopping 50 cents a day!
by Corrie Fletcher-Naylor
Getting involved in business at such a young age, Rhode quickly learned the importance of change and being pro-active in business. “My parents taught me change is inevitable so you have to embrace it and run with it,” says the 33-year-old. Curiously, he grew up listening to complaints by his parents’ staff, who resisted and even tried to prevent change. “That experience taught me adjustments are a really stressful thing, so you have to get staff involved in making transitions happen or it doesn’t work.” Living up to that motto is the reason Rhode is this year’s E Award winner for Business Results – Quality Enhancement.
For the last five years, Rhode has earned the reputation at Rosenau Transport Ltd., an Edmonton-based transportation company offering freight hauling, as the man who dips his hands into everything. He joined the company primarily in a finance capacity having a background in commerce and accounting, then quickly became involved in the company’s Y2K-friendly program.
Using his knack for numbers he developed a process to e-bill Rosenau’s customers directly by developing a Web site. The result gave customers external access to their accounts and billing information, subsequently eliminating the manual handling of substantial numbers of Rosenau’s invoices. His ideas and actions have increased the company’s revenue stream, increased the efficiency and timeliness with which Rosenau meets its clients’ expectations and has helped to attract and retain more customers. Through all of these changes Rhode has managed to decrease personnel turnover by actively involving staff in decision-making and by providing them with a sense of ownership in the organization.
Impressively, Rhode’s initiatives have helped to transform the entire company, changing an organizational culture that once stated, “We aren’t able to do that,” to a culture that now asks “How can we do this and how can we use technology to make business even more efficient,” says nominator Pat Young. Given Rhode’s impact on Rosenau, along with the honour of an E Award, he says so far “he doesn’t need a bigger hat for his head, it’s not swelling yet.” He adds, “I’ll keep doing whatever it takes to keep making the company even better!”
A new way of thinking about business put #7 Guest-Tekâs Internet access software for hotels on top
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Edmonton artist Malcolm Mayes brings his cartoon syndicate Artizans to the Net
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Profile by: Rita Feutl
Most Effective Marketing Startegy for Online Business Development
Finalists: Big Rock Brewery Ltd.; International Productivity Solutions; MarTech College
Winner: Big Rock Brewery Ltd.
Company Description: Big Rock Brewery Ltd. is a regional producer and marketer of premium quality beers in Calgary. (more…)
Wheeling & Dealing
By Kenton Friesen
Lodged between the heart and lungs in most men’s anatomy dwells a piece of the soul � the ooh-la-la-yeah organ. It’s triggered by the vivacious curves of a speeding roadster or the mud-splattered sides of a growling Hummer.
By Kenton Friesen
A turn of the head, a slight smile at the sides of the mouth, endorphins race through the blood. And then the road is quiet again. Upon this whimsical impulse, Edmonton’s Michael Warf is building his business. Warf drives a 1994 Ford Taurus with a clear coat that peels in the wind, but his e-commerce business, Wheelthings.com, sells polished fantasies in the form of 1:18 scale die-cast car models, preassembled and ready for display.
“When people [collect] models, really it’s an extension of a dream, or it’s an ego thing,” says Warf. The dreamers buy the die-cast models of cars they love but may never own. The egoists, on the other hand, already have the red BMW Z3 in the parking lot, but a replica model on the desk serves to remind everyone exactly whose car it is that is reflecting the sunlight most impressively.
It’s no doubt this car-collecting urge is primarily a male one , Warf says exactly 2% of his customers have been female and he presumes those were purchased as gifts.
A baby finger squeezes through the James Bond Aston Martin DB-5 sun roof, the steering wheel turns and the front wheels follow suit. Warf extols the virtues of the fine detailing that include a revolving licence plate and retractable bullet shield. “The manufacturer recommends you handle the weapons on this car with tweezers,” he says, gently extracting the Ben Hur-like wheel razors.
The Aston Martin is one of 400 hand-picked models of various vintages in the virtual showroom, designed by die-cast manufacturers like AUTOart, Gate and UT Models. Warf’s parents still have his big, vinyl Hot Wheels case in their basement, memories of a time growing up on a Calgary army base when cars were meant to be trashed. But dents and scratches transmogrified into a collecting craze followed by small business passion. As a collector, he scoured the globe to find a decent selection of die-cast models and was often disappointed with the quality and size of the products he received. Last Christmas, Warf combined his love for die-cast models with his online prowess. Working at an Internet property developer in his day job, Warf realized he had a big money resource inside his skull, allowing him to start an online business with mostly sweat equity, not actual dollars. “I’d been in the trenches every day, building (online business sites), talking about them, getting industry trends, the whole nine yards,” says Warf.
In January, site construction began, and by March the online shop was operational. In a house with five networked computers and an unfinished basement, start-up costs were limited to $3,000 worth of inventory. “The beautiful thing is, the face I show to the world certainly isn’t this,” says Warf, motioning to his workout/office/storage space. Serious programming sweat was poured to get the transactional process in place and the searchable catalogue up and running. Cognissa, an Edmonton-based Web site consulting company, put the graphic design through a number of usability tests and made recommendations to remove any hindrances that might impede transactions.
“Usability is a big, hot issue in the Web world,” says Warf. “Having a usable Web site go live in the beginning rather than through trial and error was a really nice feature.” With the site well-tuned, he worked hard to acquire good placement on major search engines. Yahoo, AOL and MSN now direct 80% of Wheelthings.com’s average 370 unique visitors per day.
The challenge is getting the visitors, who stay an average of five to six minutes, to actually pull out their credit cards and transact. Information and content are king and queen, the site loads quickly, is clear and concise and features the shopping instructions prominently.
Warf explored convenient and secure payment options and found that going through a third party, Ontario’s Internet Secure, which boasts 128-bit encryption, was clearly the best alternative. At $35 per month plus 15% of the average month’s $2,000 business volume, it’s a high price to pay, but insignificant when compared to setting up individual online merchant accounts with each major credit card.
The process has proven secure for customers, but not for the merchant. Wheelthings.com took an early $800 hit when a shipment to Indonesia was bought with fraudulent credit cards. For self-protection without discrimination, Warf has ceased sales to anywhere outside of Canada and the U.S., losing good customers in Germany and Argentina, but reducing the risk factor. Currently 80% of sales go south of the border.
Warf says Wheelthings.com has advantages over local retailers because it displays the complete product line-up of its chosen manufacturers. Hobby stores tend to feature top sellers exclusively, with real estate costing more than Warf’s $110 monthly server fee. “In a retail setting, if an owner went to show you a catalogue, the person who came to that store isn’t catalogue shopping, so there’s that hindrance to ordering and waiting that five day lag,” says Warf. “Online you’re flipping through a catalogue anyway and you expect there to be some kind of turnaround.”
But hellish shipping fees are a thorn in the side. Customers are charged exactly what UPS bills him for shipping, but it still comes to about $20 per car, a hefty fee for a product costing between $30 and $120 (with the exception of a $450 limited edition version of the Mercedes Benz CLK GTR FIA Champion).
Warf’s active mind is spinning out big plans for the site in the next few months. The home page will begin to dance with 10 feature cars rotating constantly and visitors will be able to zoom in on any part of a car for closer inspection. Photographing cars from every angle will allow 360-degree viewing at the click of a mouse, the kicking-the-tires experience without the sore toe.
The proverb says a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches. Why not have both? Canadian Justice Minister Anne McLellan may not be a good name to everyone, but SmartCanuk Internet Services gambled it could help lead to prosperity.
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Hard lessons have been dealt out to ICT companies who didn’t take care of the business basics (more…)
Virus Alert
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