Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 9, 1995 TAG: 9508090084
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And its corollary: You can shop in your rattiest bathrobe and your pink bunny slippers, and no one will care.
Anyone who has survived the nightmare of a Saturday at the mall will want to take a leisurely browse through the shopping options that are opening up on the World Wide Web, the most user-friendly part of the Internet.
Dozens of retailers and catalog merchants are setting up home pages, a sort of cyberspace store featuring photos and descriptions of merchandise. And many more merchants are renting space in electronic shopping centers such as Time Warner's DreamShop, an interactive shopping mall scheduled to open in September.
Time Warner has been helping consumers spend their money at home since December, when the company introduced its Full Service Network, an interactive television shopping service that's still in its testing stages. Then, in April, Time Warner and Spiegel launched Catalog 1, a shopping center on the Web. DreamShop will combine the two ventures into one interactive shopping division and will expand the services and products offered by each.
Any Joe Shopper with a computer and an Internet account - and some idea of how to use them - can browse the seven national merchants now featured in Catalog 1.
Come September, the service's name will change to DreamShop and more merchants will come online, said Time Warner spokeswoman Marilyn Harris. The method of access will remain the same, however - just open up Time Warner's Web site, called Pathfinder, and follow the on-screen directions.
On your computer screen will be a collection of partial catalogs from member merchants. Most include pictures and text descriptions, just as in printed catalogs. And, as with typical catalogs, you can browse through special holiday collections or sale sections.
"It's basically to make life easier for busy people," Harris said. "Instead of schlepping to the mall on a Saturday, you can shop from home."
Just browsing through Catalog 1 can be fun, but the electronic mall really simplifies shopping for people who already have some idea of what they want. A built-in search mechanism - called an "engine" - lets you run a custom search, simply by typing in the name of the item or category you're looking for.
This might be the handiest - and just plain neatest - of this Web mall's features, because a search such as this covers all the stores in the mall. A request for "shoes," for instance, brought up five choices, ranging from Spiegel's $49.90 Dr. J Converse to the $19.95 gel insoles sold by The Sharper Image. Typing in "table" resulted in 27 choices from Bombay, Spiegel and others.
And if even this fine-tuned shopping is too much work, or you know exactly what you want, you can enter an even more specific search command, like "blue shirt," and you'll end up with a list of nothing but blue shirts.
For the time being, you can use your home computer to browse through the Catalog 1/DreamShop merchants' catalog selections but not to order from them, Harris said. Merchants and customers are concerned about possible credit-card fraud, she said, and until Time Warner can come up with a security system that makes everybody happy, ordering will have to be done through the retailers' 800 numbers.
Online shoppers aren't limited to the DreamShop stores, though. Other malls, with other specialties, can be found all over the Web. Most work in just about the same way: Click on the "store" you want, and a partial catalog will appear.
The Branch Mall was the first World Wide Web shopping mall, according to Jon Zeeff, president of Branch Internet Services Inc. in Ann Arbor, Mich. It joined the Web in December 1993 and now includes more than 130 "storefronts," or individual merchants' home pages.
While Catalog 1 is known for its upscale merchandise and nationally known members, the Branch Mall caters to smaller, more eclectic companies that may fall slightly outside the retail mainstream, Zeeff said. SFT Enterprises Inc., for instance, offers a USS Enterprise cutaway poster, while NetDiamond lets you point and click your way to a diamond engagement ring or a tennis bracelet.
The Branch Mall is one of several Web malls that allow shoppers to buy as they browse, thanks to a system that encrypts credit-card numbers as they're transmitted, Zeeff said. This mall does not, however, cross-reference the stores' goods.
Other Web shopping centers that let customers buy merchandise over the Internet are marketplaceMCI and the Internet Shopping Network, which requires a membership. Shopping2000, which features more than 60 companies, does not have a buying option but does provide 800 numbers for all merchants.
by CNB