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June 1, 2000

Ten Fast Facts

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Ecadia Inc.

WHO:
A privately held business-to-business Internet startup founded last year by Mark Jaffe and Joe Levin.

WHAT:
Provides e-commerce companies with a complete buying decision system to convert shoppers to buyers.

WHERE:
Bellevue.

Fast Fact #1: Mark Jaffe formerly headed Walt Disney Records.

Comment: He's also held senior management positions at DreamWorks, Warner Bros. and A & M Records, with a specialty of producing and marketing music for children and families. His goal was to "expose them to more diverse and more rewarding music." For example, he produced one of the first reggae records for children -- minus the "sex, drugs and politics."

Fast Fact #2: At Disney he produced an all-star record that raised $3 million for the Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

Comment: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John and others performed their own material as well as traditional children's songs. "Little Richard did 'The Hokey Pokey' like you've never heard it before," says Jaffe.

Fast Fact #3: Ecadia grew out of Jaffe's frustration with shopping on the Web.

Comment: "I spent a lot of time on the Internet in 1998 [but] I was having great difficulty finding the information I wanted and trusting the information," he says. So, with the same zeal he brought to expanding the horizons of children's music, Jaffe set about to "elevate e-commerce a notch." Jaffe doesn't see that much difference between his past and present endeavors. "For me, it's always been about following my passion," he says.

"My passion took me to tech."

Fast Fact #4: A mutual friend introduced Jaffe to Joe Levin.

Comment: Jaffe is president. Levin is chief operating officer. Levin brings more than a decade of technology experience with B2B software companies such as Elekom Corp. and Informix Software Inc. Together, Jaffe and Levin created a buying decision system that blends technology and content. At this point, the co-founders have no immediate plans to take their company public.

Jaffe and Levin
Mark Jaffe, president, and Joe Levin, COO, of Ecadia

Fast Fact #5: Ecadia's software is sticky.

Comment: Other buying decision systems require customers to hop from site to site to research and compare products, which puts the original site at risk of losing sales. Ecadia's system allows customers to remain on the original site through the entire process --- including the sale. The integrated system consists of an interface, navigation tools and search engines that can tap a pair of third-party data bases or a company's own data base

Fast Fact #6: Ecadia has formed partnerships with Consumers Digest Online and CNET Data Services.

Comment: Consumers Digest Online is the affiliated Web site for Consumers Digest magazine. It features a data base covering more than 50,000 items ranging from sporting goods to financial planning services. CNET Data Services is Swiss affiliate of CNET Networks, a world leader in supplying technology product information. Together, they provide Ecadia's content. By clicking on topic questions of their choice, shoppers on sites equipped with Ecadia's buying decision system can review product features, read ratings, select specific attributes and then link directly to products that match their specifications and buy them.

Fast Fact #7: Ecadia recently received $2 million in first-round venture financing.

Comment: The company also signed up its first customer. DailyShopper.com, an Internet portal that guides customers to what's on sale at local stores, is using a portion of Ecadia's system.

Fast Fact 8#: Jaffe hasn't heard a single person utter the word "eyeballs" in three months.

Comment: What the heck does that mean? It means e-commerce has entered a new era, explains Jaffe. At first, companies measured success by how many people -- or eyeballs -- checked out their site. But companies can't keep spending from $40 to $160 per customer visit when the conversion rate of eyeballs to buyers is only 2 percent, says Jaffe. "We kept telling everybody that the real [test] will be the conversion of shoppers to buyers."

Fast Fact #9: Christmas was the turning point.

Comment: Since e-commerce is such a new phenomenon, the 1999 holiday season was the first time e-businesses could compare same-store sales for the busiest time of the year. The result? Traffic jumped exponentially, but sales failed to keep up, says Jaffe.

Fast Fact #10: The thrill is gone.

Comments: "Over time, the novelty of hanging out on the Web is starting to wear off," claims Jaffe. And with curiosity no longer a driving factor, companies must pay more attention to giving shoppers the information they need to become buyers, he says. "Brand in the e-commerce world used to be whatever e-commerce said it was," Jaffe says. "Brand is now what the consumer perceives it to be."



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