234 ENTREPRENEURSHIP
- Travel. Transactions such as ordering tickets or making reservations are good appli-
cations of Internet technology, as are search processes that enable customers to
check out hotels, resorts, and conference sites. Eventually, someone has to get on an
airplane or into a car (or on a train, boat, or tram). What happens in the real world
is the biggest factor in customer satisfaction. - Power. Energy exchange and management are good applications. The Energy
Exchange (http://www.enex.com/), for example, provides a complete toolkit mar-
keting energy-related products and services, including financing. At the end of the
day, however, the generation of power is a physical process and there is now insuf-
ficient generating and transmission capacity—not a problem the Web can solve.
To summarize: The Internet entrepreneur needs to scan and analyze both industries and
geographic regions to spot opportunities. Some opportunities depend on local knowl-
Global Glitches
On its Web site, BlueTie, Inc., calls itself a
“global company,” but it wasn’t always. The
venture (www.bluetie.com) was founded in
1999 as a provider of email and collaboration
software to Internet service providers and
small businesses, and its target market was
limited to subscribers in the United States.
Then in 2001 the company began to
attract customers from Canada and Australia.
“Because we’re Web based, people started
signing up from anywhere in the world,” says
David Koretz, BlueTie founder and CEO.
These new customers turned out to be a
mixed blessing. For example, BlueTie origi-
nally developed its software to display times
and dates for the 4 different time zones in the
continental United States. Translating that
capability to 24 time zones around the globe
cost BlueTie, according to Koretz, something
“in the six figures”. Format was a problem,
too. Americans read and write July 10, 2007
as 7/10/07, but in other countries that would
be read as October 7, 2007. Also, some
countries use a 24-hour clock by which U.S.
3:00 p.m. is 1500 hours. At the same time
that BlueTie was dealing with these issues,
customer support to countries in different time
zones became problematic for the 20-person
staff.Less-sophisticated vendors have encoun-
tered other problems in going global. Kevin
Reichard, a futon store owner in Wisconsin
(contact at [email protected]), was
excited about a $1500 order from Israel
before he realized that shipping would cost
as much as the merchandise. The manager
of the Space Store (www.thespacestore.com)
in Texas shipped 30 polo shirts with NASA
logos to Romania before discovering that the
customer’s credit card was a dud. Now
Space Store founder Dayna Steele Justiz no
longer accepts credit card orders from certain
countries—including Russia, Croatia, Bosnia,
and Indonesia—and requires additional verifi-
cation for card purchases from some other
countries.
“There are hidden costs in acquiring cus-
tomers overseas if you haven’t done your
homework,” notes Scott Southall, the manag-
ing director of a Virginia small-business con-
sulting firm. Still, many entrepreneurs find
that the global marketplace enabled by e-
commerce justifies the extra effort and
expense.
SOURCE:Adapted from “Internet Turns Firms into
Overseas Businesses,” The Wall Street Journal,
December 16, 2003: B4. Retrieved from the Web.
http://www.bluetie.com; and http://www.thespacestore.com.STREET STORY 6.3