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• Author: PETERSON, ERIC
• Position: HubCapAnnieUSA.com - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

HubCapAnnieUSA.com The website of Denver's Hb Cap Annie USA

WEBSITE LAUNCHED: JULY 16, 2000

FOUNDED: Hub Cap Annie (a.k.a. Jane Withers, the company's founder and presdident) has been in the used hubcap business since 1982. Ins spring 1999, she formed a partnership to develop an e-commerce site with Rockville, Md.-based Merant Inc., a software company with a global clientele.

INITIAL LIGHTBLUB: While shopping for companies to take her thriving hubcap distributorship onto the World Wide Web, Withers met representatives from Merant at a Rotary Club meeting and started talking about e-commerce options. "They were here at 9 a.m. the next morning," she recalled. "I thought, 'These guys are serious.'"

IN A NUTSHELL: Visitors to HubCapAnnieUSA.com can search for replacements for lost hubcaps, view pictures, and place an online order. "The only thing I can't do for a customer in Wyoming is install them," explained Withers. Currently, Hub Cap Annie's online catalog includes some 400 different varieties of used hubcaps out of about 2,000 in existence. The site doesn't begin and end as a sales tool, however. It incorporates a hubcap quiz, a hubcap museum, and hubcap links. For now, Wither is selling late 1980s and 1990s hubcaps online, but hopes to expand to vintage caps.

THE MARKET: Massive. "Half of the...