Paris-based start-up iMediation SA is launching a software package that enables budding e-commerce sites to up their transaction rate by rolling out and managing an affiliate partner program with other web sites. The package, called iMediation 1.0, was developed with the experience gained by the company’s CEO, Sven Lung, while heading up the Paris office of the German e-commerce vendor Intershop AG. Lung says he perceived that, once merchants had addressed the technical challenges inherent in getting an e-commerce site up and running, their next problem was to increase their transaction volume. Looking at the success of on-line bookstore Amazon.com, Lung saw it had leveraged its sales through its affiliate partner program, launched in August 1997 and, by July this year, boasting 100,000 resellers offering Amazon’s books. With a software developer recruited from his own alma mater, MIT, Lung got a $2m injection of funding from Viventures, the venture capital arm of utilities and publishing conglomerate Vivendi (which also includes cellular phone operator Cegetel and pay TV company Canal+) to set up iMediation. The company already has a CEO in the US, San Francisco-based Marc Bonham, and will be opening offices in London and Berlin later this month. Lung said he expects revenues of $6m in 1999, adding that the company will be selling both a product and a service, called iMediation Channel Lease. This is the option for merchants who want to lease rather than purchase the software platform to begin with, enabling them to experiment with e-commerce without committing the $50,000 per screen that iMediation 1.0 costs to buy. The iMediation platform provides, with the aid of an Oracle database, the middleware between the main client’s e-commerce shop and the web sites of its affiliate partners. It gives each side the wherewithal to track and document the flow of sales through the affiliates.
