new business model
The large web developers are not geared up to what they see as speculative investments:
they have substantial overheads which require a constant stream of shop commissions.
for which fees only became payable when the
business started generating an income?
Flexible shop developers
In theory, there would be zero risk to the An organisation that came across The Informed
entrepreneur and a small risk to the site de- Executive’s radar in this context was Advantix
veloper that its costs might not be recovered. Consulting, based at Hove in East Sussex.
On the upside of the equation, there would be While the company is clearly able to demon-
a real prospect of making sales that would strate a portfolio of ‘classic’ shop develop-
not have been possible were it not for the site. ments, what attracted attention was that it of-
So we enquired around the trade. fers what it claims is a free electronic shop
facility. On the grounds that ‘free lunches’ nor-
Working to a new business model
mally don’t exist, it was worth investigating
the Advantix stall further.
The number of electronic ‘shop fitters’ pre- Adam Hempenstall, who founded the
pared to operate with that business model was company, explained that one of its first e-com-
small, as might be expected. The large web merce clients was a specialist engineering
developers are not geared up to what they see distributor, selling a broad catalogue of equip-
as speculative investments: they have sub- ment to its sector for anything between a few
stantial overheads which require a constant pounds and almost £5,000.
stream of new shop commissions to maintain “It seemed that this would be the last busi-
themselves and their staff in the take-away ness on earth to take the electronic shop route:
cappuccinos to which they are accustomed. we had assumed that it would always sell
But what we also found on our travels was through traditional paper-based channels.”
the type of developer which could afford to be What the Advantix team discovered from
flexible because it reflected the ethos of the analysing the business was that the custom-
small business it had set out to serve. We had ers for large, expensive ‘trade’ items would
been looking for the kind of shop builder that not simply browse the internet, find the low-
is able to listen to the needs of the market- est price and enter their card details.
place and react decisively. Experience demonstrated that they would
call in to the contact number, discuss the item
“We realised that there was an online shop model that could
and its availability – perhaps as much to es-
be rolled out to virtually any business that needed it. That led
tablish that the site was not an elaborate scam
– and then complete the purchase online.
to the idea of templating the whole shop architecture so that
“After working on the site for two months,
and understanding a great deal more about
an online business can be up and running within an hour.”
the buying patterns of customers in that and
other market sectors, we realised that there
was a model that could be rolled out to virtu-
ally any business that needed it. That led to
the idea of templating the whole shop archi-
tecture so that an online business can be up
and running within an hour.”
Based on prepared templates
The notion of building an online shop from
prepared templates is nothing new: intellec-
tual ‘re-cycling’ is to be found underlying the
most conventional developers’ output.
94
The Informed Executive
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