ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 15, 1996 TAG: 9603150045
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
A MULTILINGUAL Web site speaks customers' language and even converts prices to their currency.
Universal Shopping Service's headquarters may be in a tiny office at rural Union Hall, but it has global ambitions.
The company - U-Shop for short - has created a World Wide Web site to sell American goods to international consumers in their own languages and currencies.
"This is borderless shopping," said Ed Pool, one of five Southwest Virginia businessmen who formed U-Shop.
When you visit the U-Shop site - http://www.ushop.com - the first thing you do is select your language. Right now, only English is up and running, but German should be available in a week or so. French and Spanish will follow.
You then select your nation, and prices for goods are converted to your currency. This ability to talk to customers on their own terms is what the partners are counting on to set U-Shop apart from the dozens of other on-line computer shopping services, Pool said. After all, he asked, how many shoppers would be willing to buy something if they couldn't read the product description or if they didn't know how much it would cost them?
U-Shop's inventory runs from artwork to power tools, sweat shirts to fishing tackle. The list of 20 vendors includes a Roanoke Avon distributor, a Southside Virginia peanut farmer and an Atlanta baseball cap company.
"The idea was to build something that American small- and medium-sized businesses could participate in," Pool said.
Small operators typically don't even try to export their goods, he said, because they have neither the expertise nor the money to deal with shipping costs, importing licenses and exporting regulations. Instead, they now can pay U-Shop $25 a year to have their merchandise included in the catalog without worrying about the details.
Doyle Enterprises Inc., a Rocky Mount company that manufactures fleecewear, has placed several sweat shirts in the U-Shop catalog. The 100-employee company has a plant in Mexico and has exported goods in the past, said assistant vice president Derrick Doyle. But even they have trouble cutting through international red tape.
"A company like us, we like to concentrate on what we do best," he said. "And that's why there's a need for services like U-Shop."
The Web site was designed by Ed Schwartz, a professor at Virginia Tech and part of the school's New Media Center. It opened for business in January and has averaged 200 hits - Internet jargon for visitors - a day, many from overseas.
But actual sales have been slow. In fact, the only item that has sold is a pair of pants - and Schwartz bought those.
One of the biggest barriers to making sales, Pool said, is the widespread fear that credit card numbers transmitted electronically can be plucked out of cyberspace by hackers and then used to make unauthorized purchases.
Potential customers are reminded of that risk frequently. Just try to transmit any information to U-Shop - even just a ZIP code - and a box pops on-screen, warning you that any information you send is not secure and might be intercepted.
"That little warning box is a killer," Pool said. It's like opening a beautiful new shop, he said, and then keeping 20 Rottweilers inside. Or, Schwartz added, like telling shoppers they're welcome to buy whatever they want in your store - but that a mugger might be lurking right outside the door.
Technically, a risk does exist, Schwartz said. But the partners think they can overcome the public's misgivings by educating consumers. Because, Schwartz said, even if a hacker did somehow break into a system, there's so much information zipping around that a single credit card number would be a needle in a haystack.
The partners continue to look for more vendors to display wares on the Web site. So far, just about everyone they've contacted has been excited at the prospect, Schwartz said.
"There's just too much written about the Internet for businesses not to want to hear about it," he said. "They may not be computer- or Internet-literate, but they're not stupid."
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Global shopping. color.by CNB