Concept: A mass-mailing service that utilizes electronic transfer to shortcut the post office, saving clients both time and money
Founder: William Bolger, former U.S. Postmaster General
Financing: $25 million in venture capital
Source of Idea: The U.S. Postal Service looked into the concept but abandoned it under pressure from the telecommunications industry
Critical Hurdle: Convincing corporations that it's more effective and efficient to do mailings out of house
Projections: $33 million in 1990; potential $6-billion market
NATIONWIDE REMITTANCE
Playing the Float
At this moment a couple hundred million dollars is sitting in mailboxes. It will take a couple days before those mortgage and car-loan payments reach their destinations and another couple days before they're cleared and the money is transferred into collectors' accounts. Until then, consumers will earn the interest.
If, however, the float time was cut, collectors would draw the interest -- about 27¢ a day on a $1,000 payment. For a lender or insurance company handling 100,000 transactions a month, that adds up to more than $300,000 a year.
Those numbers are compelling enough that Nationwide Remittance Centers (NRC), in McLean, Va., has spent four years trying to set up a system that will trim that float by a few days -- and has bet its existence on one big sticking point: the plan needs the cooperation of the U.S. Postal Service.
NRC's idea is to intercept bill payments right at the post office. By diverting coded payment envelopes directly to its own local processing centers and then moving the money electronically, NRC would prevent checks from having to move from postal bin to carrier sack -- chopping off at least a day of delivery time. For a transaction fee of 10¢ to 15¢, clients would get their money earlier and eliminate the overhead required to process the payments themselves.
If the post office OKs the system this fall, as many expect it will, NRC is well poised to exploit it. It's already collected $7.8 million in venture capital and has 30 processing centers, compared with its competitors' half dozen or so. "We shall rise or fall depending on whether the post office approves it this year," CEO Ed Bartlett says. If it does, NRC expects to do $5 million next year; if it doesn't, the company will likely close up shop.
A Small Piece
"The reason we went into business, obviously, was to make money. We saw an opportunity here -- there were no small, high-end, premium-niche players in the liquor market. What had happened to the wine and beer industry was remarkable; 15 years ago there weren't any mass-marketed, high-quality California wines. Same thing with brewing. You can buy great beer in America now. That hadn't happened in the liquor business before. It's such a huge industry and dominated by so few players, it's very hard to break into. But it's worth $24 billion a year, and you don't have to have a very big piece of that in order to be happy. We're not trying to be the next Seagrams; we're just trying to have a nice little business. We've been doing it on a wing and a prayer from day one."
-- Brian Tyrol, cofounder of Vermont Distillers, a microdistillery that makes a liqueur from maple syrup
AVID TECHNOLOGY
Apple Connection
The problem with editing videotape, Bill Warner knew, is that you can't change your mind. Reinserting a frame that's been cut is as cumbersome as retyping a letter to fix a typo. Now, Warner thinks he's solved the problem -- and more important, so do the folks at Apple Computer Inc.
Warner's idea: copy complete video footage in real time to digital hard disks, so editors can view shots easily and make trial cuts and changes quickly. At $50,000 to $80,000, the systems produced by Avid Technology Inc. are a third the price of the fancier systems they emulate. "We make the sale," he says, "on the time you save and the creativity you get." The company's Apple connection won't hurt sales, either. Though Warner originally designed the product on an Apollo computer -- he was marketing manager there -- Apple wooed him to the Macintosh after its reps saw Avid's preliminary system at a convention last fall. "We shipped him a Mac, then pestered him until he tested its power," says Tyler Peppel, Apple's manager of multimedia products.
In its informal relationship with Apple, Avid gets marketing help, technical support, and matchmaking with distributors. Apple gets to display leadership and innovation, Peppel says -- and sell more computers. So important does Apple consider these relationships, in fact, that it's dedicated the resources of the large Apple Development Group to helping 10,000 companies now developing Mac hardware and software.
HOT MEDIA PLAY: AMERICAN COLLEGIATE NETWORK
Big Mag on Campus
It's old news: big company gets so bloated it loses touch with its market, only to find itself displaced by an upstart. Not exactly man bites dog.
Except when you consider the number and sheer heft of big companies that have failed in the same market in which The American Collegiate Network Inc. (ACN) has become a $3-million-plus business since February 1988. Started by someone with no previous publishing experience, the company puts out a national monthly newspaper aimed at college students -- thus competing in a market that's been as cluttered as a sophomore's dorm room. Time Inc., McGraw-Hill, and the Washington Post Group, among other heavyweights, have launched -- and abandoned -- publications for the same audience. "The largest media houses in the
