Cyber successes: three diverse Indiana companies are thriving with the help of the internet.

• Author: Barr, Mary
• Position: Information Technology - Retailing on the Web

The dot-com bubble may have burst for some, but that hasn't stopped enterprising Indiana companies from improving their operations through the use of the Internet.

The state is home to the biggest spice retailer on the Web, an up-and-coming e-mail target-marketer that uses a Web interface to help reach non-techie clients, and a four-decade-old furniture manufacturer that has improved efficiencies through online efforts. Their stories follow:

THE GREAT AMERICAN SPICE CO

www.americanspice.com

With an offering which includes more than 2,400 private-label spices--blended and packaged on-site in its Fort Wayne factory shop--the Great American Spice Co. calls itself "the world's largest spice shop."

It was only after the company cooked up success online that it opened its two brick-and-mortar stores. Also this month, Great American Spice will be opening a restaurant inspired by its top-selling product, Coney Island Hot Dog Mix.

"Yes, we do things kind of backwards," jokes president Dan Turkette. He is also president of TEK Interactive Group, an e-commerce development company. It was in his role at TEK that he took special interest as a client approached him to develop a spice-selling Web site.

Turkette is a culinary-school-certified chef, so when his client didn't have the budget to move forward on the spice site, they joined forces and went into business together, launching the e-business in June 1997. He opened the first store in 2001 and another a year later, both in Fort Wayne. In the past five years, Great American Spice has had an average annualized sales growth of 318 percent.

With 90 percent of sales online, he says his secret ingredient is an enormous amount of Web traffic. Turkette is vigilant about monitoring and "sponsoring" top keywords that his prospective customers are likely to type into a search engine. To consistently land among the top results of a search comes at a price. "We manage about 1,000 different keywords, everything from 'Dave's Insanity Hot Sauce' to such words as 'tarragon' and 'thyme,"' says Turkette. "Around the holidays, we'd spend $500-600 a day just on keyword acquisitions."

High traffic is also due to good partnerships. The company has a revenue-sharing agreement with Epicurious.com, the Conde Nast-owned site which is the largest recipe resource on the Internet, and does a monthly e-mail newsletter to about one-half million subscribers.

Upcoming plans for Great American Spice include expanding its in-store...