Startup Spotlight: Plastic is fundamental element of eShui
Published: 25 Aug 2000 14:32 BST
E-business company Intronets launched spoof site eShui this month in order to lure more businesses to their parent e-business site. Intronets believes small businesses are more likely to spend money on introducing Feng Shui principles within their offices than on investing in the Internet. Rather than trying to compete with popular sites offering ancestral wisdom, it's decided to join them.
The tongue-in-cheek solution has been to develop eshui.co.uk -- a six-point guide based on the five elements of Feng Shui: fire, earth, metal, water, wood and the added e-business element, plastic. Intronets' business strategy rests on its extremely tenuous link to plastic, being that all "IT equipment is cloaked in its majestic aura". The idea is that potential customers will be deviously enticed into visiting intronets.com by going first to eShui.
"Many companies that we speak to would rather get a Feng Shui consultant in at around £100 per hour to tell them to get a goldfish, move their desks round and dangle some crystals from the ceiling," says Andrew Wicking, managing director of Intronets. Since the launch of eShui in August, Intronets claims to have "attracted serious hits from eShui", but Wicking admits that it is too soon to assess the overall difference the spoof site will make to its ultimate intention of turning small and medium sized companies into e-businesses.
The purpose of eShui does however become a bit random once you spot the obvious mistake -- the site only contains one subtle link to intronets.com! As eShui itself has nothing worthwhile to offer, the original cunning plan all becomes a bit pointless. Any naive visitor to the site would have to be psychic to know that they are then supposed to click-through to intronets.com.
The service: eshui.co.uk
What it does: aims to entice businesses to visit parent site intronets.com
How it works: in theory there 'should' be links that click through to Intronets.
Who it's for: small to medium sized businesses who would benefit from having a Web presence.
What you can find there: not a lot!
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