Increase Sales Through Multimedia Marketing.

• Author: Holtzman, Henry
• Position: Required Reading

The Hybrid Company Bernadette Tiernan Dearborn Trade Publishing Chicago, Ill. 2001, 302 pages, $27.00.

The dawn of the new millennium brought with it the sunset of the short-lived dot-com companies. These were companies that existed only by the grace of computer bits and bytes. For more than five years they dominated the thinking of investors and retailers. Eager investors and business analysts forecast the end of traditional retailing. Even many traditional retailers glumly agreed. They were all wrong.

Author Tiernan points out that those who leapt aboard the dot-com bandwagon were blind to statistics and deaf to the cash registers. Between 1995 and 1999, the dot-coms, shopping malls and Main Street merchants were all recording consecutive sales booms during seasonal December peaks.

That's when something amazing happened. After a few fits and starts, the off-line firms with genuine customer sensitivity adapted both to the new technology and the marketing approaches it offered. The result was a hybrid company that offered both the "bricks" of real people, real service and real shopping venues plus the computer "clicks" of convenience, easy choices and credit card purchasing.

The "bricks and clicks" not only created a multi-tiered customer base, but also they provided a much easier way for retailers and business-to-business sellers to segment their markets while controlling inventory and overhead expenses.

The author is among the first to recognize the impact of the hybrid company, which she defines as:

"... a business that reaches its customers through multiple channels of clicks, bricks and catalogs in a seamless, integrated entity. Hybrid companies assimilate e-commerce Web sites, a physical presence and catalogs. Each channel promotes and reinforces every other channel."

She is aware that the effect of the dot-com companies was critical to the healthy growth of the hybrids. Tiernan emphasizes the one factor all hybrids have in common: "In every hybrid model, the e-commerce channel is imperative."

The backbone of the book is developed early with the use of "Seven Success Strategies for...