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By John Davies | Sunday, May 11, 2008 | No comments posted.
Six years ago, Johnny Mathis Jr. used his last $125 for a round-trip ticket to Las Vegas to present his video technology idea at a trade show.
The critics said the e-commerce idea wouldn't work. Now 70 to 80 percent of the direct response industry is done on the Internet. This is up from only 5 percent when Johnny founded Livemercial.
This transformation is a huge credit to this Portage High School graduate who was determined to prove the naysayers wrong. What makes this even more inspiring is that his company is based in Valparaiso.
Because of Johnny's success, he was inducted as a Fellow in the Society of Innovators founded by Ivy Tech Northwest. The society celebrates innovators and innovation in Northwest Indiana.
Today, Livemercial is world's largest direct response provider on the internet. Its core products include a "streaming" technology, which allows a purchaser to view a commercial about a product via e-mail or the Internet.
Another breakthrough was a "virtual call center" that minimizes shopper abandonment.
In fact, Johnny wishes he had patented the latter as he did the former.
Basically, it is a "micro site" built around a single product. At the time, the industry relied on a "shopping cart" for a buyer to purchase different products. Instead, the call center encourages the buyer to increase the dollar value of a single purchase through additional purchases. "We call this an upsell tree."
Amazingly, Livemercial handles upwards of $500 million of e-commerce business each year. Now there are about 100 employees, with design offices in West Palm Beach and a mobile division in Irving, Calif. The 35-year old professional pilot commutes between offices in his own aircraft. In fact, Livemercial has an aviation division with four planes, plus other e-commerce companies.
This is pretty amazing for a guy who went out of business during the "Dot-Com" bust of the late 90's. But he was determined to make a comeback. His wife Lisa is a great support, he said. During the next two years, he came up with the idea of "streaming" commercials using his auto sensing technology that worked on either a dial-up or broadband connection. "The available technology wasn't effective," he said. "Ours was." The virtual customer order system soon followed.
Not surprisingly, Johnny has lots of options. "We could move the company to Florida," he said. Or he could sell. "But why not do something even greater here." So he has decided to build a new headquarters here.
That's not to suggest there aren't challenges. "We need skilled programmers," he said. The region needs to focus more on information technology, he said.
"We want to hire more talent from here."
Now Johnny wants to make the company into a "playground" to incubate more ideas. "I didn't have any support for my ideas," he said. "I want to help others with their ideas and grow our business as well."
John Davies is Managing Director of the Society of Innovators. He is president of Valparaiso-based Woodlands Communications Group.The opinion expressed in this column is the writer's and not necessarily that of The Times.
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