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September 6, 1999

Web Links Get Local

Kinzan.com offers Web-site tools

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nternet newcomer Kinzan.com last week launched a suite of products and services designed to help companies inject local flavor into a network of Web sites, while still maintaining centralized control. The suite also gives smaller companies a chance to establish Web businesses.

The SiteMan suite of tools and services includes SiteMan, a Web-site creation tool, and SiteMan Storefront, an E-commerce tool for building catalogs, conducting order fulfillment, and processing transactions. Companies can use the tools to design Web-site templates that govern the overall look and feel of a site so they can control use of branding and logos. Then, a local division of the company or a customer can access the centrally branded site, select a Web template, and walk through four steps to build their own Web storefront.

Knight Ridder's Internet division, Knight Ridder New Media, is using Kinzan.com's products on some of its online regional guides, which in turn sell the SiteMan capabilities to merchants in their regions who want to establish Web sites.

"We're trying to give merchants in our markets an easy-to-use tool that enables them to build an online store quickly and easily," says Emily Lyons Soelberg, E-commerce business development manager at Knight Ridder New Media. Because merchants don't need to know HTML or download any software, Soelberg says Kinzan.com's tools make it so easy for businesses to set up an online store "that even a small mom-and-pop retailer can put together a storefront pretty easily."

It also helps local merchants benefit from the Internet's global reach. Already, one of Ohio.com's merchants--two guys who sell The Bonehead, dog-bone headware to Cleveland Browns football fans--is selling its wares to people around the world. A few weeks ago, Soelberg says, someone on an aircraft carrier at sea purchased The Bonehead.

Vernon Keenan, an Internet analyst at Keenan Vision, says Kinzan.com's offering is one of the few available that gives companies of all sizes a simple way to get involved in E-commerce. "If they want to get online, this is going to be a smooth, easy-to-use system to do it," he says.

The SiteMan software is server-based and runs on Unix and Windows NT. Companies can run their own SiteMan sites; Kinzan.com also provides hosting services, or the companies can opt to publish SiteMan sites on another hosting service.

SiteMan is available now. Pricing is based on the number and types of sites that need to be created and whether or not Kinzan.com hosts the application. Monthly costs range from $50 to $200 per site.

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