• Intel, the chipmaker, which learned the hard way how good the Internet was for spreading news of flaws in products. The Net abounds with skeptical academics and consumerists with fast typing fingers.
• Other hazards of the Internet for business people. What if you set up an electronic storefront like the Lilienfelds’ and then a manufacturer decided to cut out the middle people and sell on the Net directly or through a larger outlet? Security is another threat. While I was writing NetWorld!, most commercial areas on the Net lacked a way to protect credit card numbers. Hackers broke into General Electric’s Web area and stole corporate secrets. Another risk is competitors looking over price lists and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of products.
Those caveats will end the chapter. By far, the Internet is a positive rather than a negative factor for business and customers alike. Wired consumers will reward good companies, punish the losers, and spur the winners to do still better.
Bob and JoAnn Lilienfeld: The Net as a
Way to Promote Small Businesses
Thousands of miles to the south of Ann Arbor, home of White Rabbit Toys, Luciana Gores was reading a popular mailing list called Net Happenings. It was a kind of town crier. Each day from North Dakota a man named Gleason Sackman sent out informative posts on the many new services that were springing up on the Internet.
Gores worked as a network expert, and she was already used to buying technical books through the Internet, which offered a far greater variety than what she would find in her own city, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
She was also the mother of a seven-year-old named Lucas. So when the mailing list told her of White Rabbit, she checked it out on the Web.
People who visited the virtual store, or at least those with the right equipment, saw a logo with the rabbit from Lewis Caroll’s imagination. They also conjured up a color picture of a real toy store with shelf after shelf of tot pleasers, a tiny table and stool on the floor, and a look of friendly chaos—in short, a shopper’s delight for children and parents alike, which in fact the “real” White Rabbit was. The traditional store, the one at 2611 Plymouth Road, had thrived. Now Bob and JoAnn Lilienfeld were trying to woo virtual customers such as Luciana Gores. Their electronic White Rabbit just may have been the first full-service toy store—as opposed to one-product billboards or specialty shops—to open up on the Internet.
An ad on the opening screen helped set the tone for Luciana Gores and other customers of White Rabbit: “We specialize in high-quality toys that help children to create, learn, imagine, and explore. Our toys come from all over the world. We offer such international favorites as Brio (Sweden), Ravensburger (Germany), Primetime Playthings and Creativity for Kids (United States).”