| Ecommerce's Monthly Talking Point: October 1999 Starting From Scratch There’s a crazy, hazy consensual dream out there, and it’s finding subscribers faster than any portal, online service or TV channel. It’s the notion that the Business-to-Consumer Garden Of Eden is being born again in Europe, that the clock has somehow twisted back to 1996, and that everything that’s happened since then… didn’t happen. These ‘new’ consumer ecommerce sites are endlessly listed in the mainstream media, and their valuations rehearsed. Never mind that most of these sites duplicate offers already established by US players. Never mind that the notional fortunes of their founders are tiny compared to those of their US brethren. Never mind that the much-described boo.com has still not launched, despite being widely advertised - and even recommended on a national radio programme as ‘one of the safe, established brands’ that consumers should trust. Never mind that proponents of the latest European dot com so often seem to regard the global nature of the web as a one-way phenomenon: it gives them reach, but somehow doesn’t make them vulnerable to the long arm of competition. But then the net startup thing is all about doing six impossible things before breakfast. And breakfast increasingly means being bought by a US counterpart. Scratch many European dot com’s and you’ll find a nine month exit plan. |