In 2022, after 40 years in print-related industries, I have decided to focus on the real estate industry. The following post has been left here to provide historical information on my background in e-commerce.
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E-commerce has been a passion of mine for over 35 years.
In 1988, long before the World Wide Web, we used the Internet with modems and a Bulletin Board System (BBS) at Bindco (which I co-founded in 1982) to process manufacturing and fulfillment orders from our clients.
In 1994, Bindco manufactured the physical browser software required for the Web pioneer Mosaic (which became Netscape) to “launch” the World Wide Web. Because I had already seen how the Windows GUI completely revolutionized text-based MS-DOS, I immediately knew that adding a Web GUI to the text-based Internet we were using for our BBS would cause e-commerce to explode.
Shortly after Mosaic’s launch, Steve Jobs introduced me to Bill McKiernan who had recently started CyberSource to provide Web-based order processing and software downloads. We quickly partnered and began offering turnkey solutions using their e-commerce technology and Bindco’s manufacturing and fulfillment. One of our projects, Hewlett-Packard’s first e-commerce site, was so revolutionary and successful that it was featured in Time and Business Week.
In 1999, e-commerce was an integral part of my Gung-Ho “virtual company” model which utilized the Internet to integrate our clients’ orders with our disparate brick-and-mortar suppliers to provide best-in-class software manufacturing and fulfillment solutions.
In our first year, we developed our GENIE system and processed over 20,000 H&R Block orders comprised of more than 2,200,000 TaxCut software kits in more than 150,000 shipping cartons with a variance in only 5 kits — better than 99.99999% fulfillment accuracy.
Today, Gung-Ho is utilizing its proprietary e-commerce solutions, integrated with its printing, publishing, and fulfillment solutions, to launch microsites that serve vertical niche markets.
