Firms Coming To Rescue Of E-Tailers

Firms Coming To Rescue Of E-Tailers

Excerpted from Los Angeles Business Journal, Monday, September 4, 2000.

FIRMS COMING TO RESCUE OF E-TAILERS SEEKING MERGERS

Wall Street West

September 4, 2000

Benjamin Mark Cole

Each week seems to bring new players to Web-land, but now there's a twist.

The new guns don't talk about startups; they focus on restructuring, mergers or retuning enterprises for new capital infusions.

Typical of this new breed of e-rescuer is Santa Monica-based NetCatalyst Inc., an outfit that calls itself "the liquidity engineers." The company provides advice or even management help to get a business to the next stage.

As widely reported, many e-companies are burning through their capital - not a problem as long as another round of financing can be finagled.

"But in April, everything changed," said Riggs Eckelberry, a principal at NetCatalyst. "New capital is hard to come by. Now, companies really have to change their focus from simply growth to packaging themselves for the acquirer or investor."

Until recently the mad dash to e-commerce was merely about becoming "first in the space", or getting "lots of eyeballs" looking at a Web site. But the spring tech wreck rendered many such business plans obsolete...

...The sea change in investor sentiment means that almost every e-business must revamp its business plan, he believes...

...NetCatalyst assesses whether that's happening and quickly moves to improve a client's site so it will be more attractive to a merger partner.