If you want to expand your consumer e-commerce efforts—and your customer base—beyond your own Web site, the opportunity is now. Online distributors like Atlanta-based Nexchange Corporation enable you to market your product on dozens, or even thousands, of content-oriented sites that also have online stores, giving you a virtual global network. Conversely, if you need products to sell in your online store, Nexchange can provide those for you.

Nexchange’s strength is the patent-pending technology it has developed to move products online to virtual stores and to provide support necessary for completing the sale on the content site. While sellers benefit from a commission and from keeping the customer on their sites, merchants remain in control of products, pricing, and positioning on the page and can make changes at any time. They can also generate sales reports from available data.

Although Nexchange now has several competitors, it was one of the first in this space. The company started in 1996 and currently sells on a network of more than 180,000 online stores.
TechRepublic’s weekly profile gives you a snapshot of an IT-related enterprise. This quick look offers vital information to keep you apprised of potential customers, partners, and competitors.
The market
The term “affiliate marketing” is used to describe what Nexchange does when it distributes retail products to virtual stores. Analysts anticipate a growth in affiliate marketing. Forrester, for example, predicts that 21 percent of online sales will come from affiliate Web sites by 2003 (up from 13 percent currently). Nexchange’s competitors include Be Free, Commission Junction , and LinkShare.

Strategic advantage
Nexchange has signed strategic partnership agreements with several companies, including BellSouth (which will add shopping to its realpages.com); Yupi.com (which will promote Nexchange to its Spanish-language network of Internet sites); Cox Interactive Media (which will add e-commerce to its network of 30 online communities); Direct Hit (which will use Nexchange to power some of its virtual stores); and MindSpring (which promotes Nexchange to its 50,000 Web hosting clients).

Financial information
Nexchange Corporation is a privately held company based in Atlanta. In August 1999, it received $9 million in second-round funding from a group of investors led by Interprise Technology Partners.

Management team

  • Daniel D. Ross, cofounder and chairman of the board
  • Del Ross, cofounder and chief executive officer
  • Joe Michaels, cofounder and president
  • Russell Stravitz, vice chairman
  • David Fagin, senior vice president of merchandising
  • Michael F. Jacobs, CPA, vice president of finance, and controller
  • Randy May, system architect
  • Dave Slovin, vice president of sales and marketing
  • Kathy Van Pelt, vice president of merchant marketing
  • Susan Dragojlovich, director of people services
  • Howard Morrison, board of directors

Nexchange Corporation400 Northridge RoadSuite 600Atlanta, GA 30350Toll-free: (800) 594-0170Voice: (770) 649-6777Fax: (770) 649-6688http://www.nexchange.com/
What others are saying about Nexchange
“The affiliate program goal is to have customers stay at the site for a substantial period and return often. In some cases, the goal is to earn money, too. But the issue is that you shouldn’t promote other sites unless you really stand to gain. This is a major reason for the appearance of a range of Internet concepts that handle affiliate program problems. Nexchange.com is one of them. It offers web sites a neutral shopfront and all the products which are relevant to the site. Under this concept, you don’t promote an affiliate owner, you promote your own brand name. You ‘rent’ the framework (technology, etc.) and put up the signs yourself, then just choose what products you want to promote, under your own brand, at your own site.”

—“Brand Building Now A Small Company Reality ” by Martin Lindstrom

What’s your opinion?
Do you have a suggestion for a company to profile? Let us know by posting a comment or sending us a note.