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Not Gone: Visionary Company Breathes Profitable New Life Into Online Businesses

Solid business principles and focus on profitability bring success, growth and long-term customer relationships to “reborn” Internet companies

(Walnut Creek, CA) November 12, 2002 – In an environment where the online landscape is littered with dead dotcoms that failed to turn a profit, one company has found a way to grow rapidly and succeed. By aggregating compatible Internet services, focusing on customer service and delivering the types of products and services that consumers tend to research online, Next Phase Media (NPM), a Walnut-Creek, California-based start-up, has successfully found a formula to build a fast growing Internet based company. Starting by resurrecting of some of the Internet’s best-known brands, NPM has developed a simple yet powerful online business model, building an aggregated commerce umbrella with multiple services that utilize the same consumer base. The result is an exponential increase in traffic, a low customer acquisition cost, and sixteen-fold jump in revenues from 2001 to 2002.

“The Internet has evolved into its next phase, if you will, one that requires a new strategy for success,” says Payam Zamani, NPM founder and CEO. “During the initial phase of online commerce, most Internet companies floundered in small niches with limited potential to attract large numbers of visitors. Most of these services simply were not viable standalone businesses. Successful online businesses can take a page from traditional media companies, where success is dependent on aggregating product lines and services that share customers with similar needs and interests. It’s more efficient and lowers the cost of customer acquisition. Within our umbrella strategy, we specialize in optimizing the lifecycle of large purchase items for consumers and providers.”

Zamani, a co-founder and former CEO of Autoweb.com, initially started NPM with the purchase and relaunch of three well-known Internet brands that had been shuttered in the online automotive and home improvement space – iMotors.com, Carclub.com and iCastle.com. Combined, these services had raised nearly $500 million from VC’s and other investors.

The company reformulated and relaunched the services and built a strong business model that benefits both consumers and businesses while generating solid revenues and profits. In the 14 months since it was founded, NPM has seen its revenues increase and traffic grow exponentially.

In addition, NPM recently created and launched the beta version of AgentConnect.com, a referral service for consumers wishing to find qualified, licensed local real estate professionals to help them buy or sell a property.

In addition to the automotive, real estate and property improvement industries, NPM plans to expand its online services into new areas where it can cross-sell the products and services offered by member companies.

“NPM is a new channel for organizations that want to grow their business beyond traditional boundaries,” says Zamani. “We’re the only online organization with the technology and the experience to aggregate demand in multiple vertical markets and distribute the customer leads in real-time to our quality, pre-screened service providers. We can provide our member partners with new customers, cross-market our services and provide our customers with ongoing value throughout their lifetime. It’s seamless and effective. It requires only that the member company be able to meet both the demand we send and the customer service standards we require.”

NPM launched its online presence last fall with the reintroduction of iMotors.com. Formerly a complex custom-order buying service for used cars, iMotors.com had been shuttered for several months. Powered by NPM’s team of experienced e-commerce and online automotive veterans, iMotors.com replaced its former business model and overhead with a new focus on maintaining a simple, efficient marketplace for people to buy and sell new and used cars. Under the new model and umbrella strategy, the iMotors.com service is growing and profitable, generating revenues by charging automobile franchises a referral fee for each qualified consumer referred through the service. Through iMotors.com, consumers specify the make, model and specs of the new car they are ready to buy. iMotors sends the inquiry to a member automobile dealer, who provides the customer a competitive price for the vehicle. The service is free to consumers and requires no obligation to buy or lease the vehicle.

iMotors.com also allows individuals to advertise their vehicle for a low $24.95 fee for a three-month posting, with a money back guarantee if the car does not sell.

Since its relaunch, traffic to iMotors.com has grown ten-fold, increasing from 300,000 unique visitors last October, to more than 3 million in August. With about 5 percent of these visitors estimated to be in the market to buy a car within a month, that translates to about 150,000 car buyers, in the market to spend more than $3 billion in just one month.

NPM also relaunched CarClub.com earlier this summer. A former JD Power online club for car owners, CarClub.com had been shut down for nearly a year prior.

The CarClub service varies from the iMotors model in that participating automobile dealerships pay a set membership fee that gives them exclusive territories. The CarClub.com service successfully provides consumers with highly competitive pricing and individualized service.

To further its offerings, NPM also reopened the online doors to iCastle.com, an Internet reference and referral resource for home and property improvement information and contractors. iCastle.com is a one-stop service for property owners wishing to find qualified, pre-screened contractors for their home improvement projects. The service offers referrals to qualified, licensed local contractors in more than two dozen areas of property improvement. Traffic to the service has increased dramatically since it was reopened.

NPM recently expanded with the addition of the AgentConnect.com brand, developed in-house. AgentConnect.com connects property buyers and sellers with licensed, screened real estate professionals in their market. Like all other NPM brands, AgentConnect.com is free to the consumer, with revenue generated through referral fees charged to the realtor.

 “Next Phase Media already has a significant amount of cross traffic between services,” Zamani says. “For example, homeowners are quite likely to buy cars and hire contractors. As we continue to expand and aggregate the efficiencies of the various sites in the NPM network, we have the potential to produce more than one source of revenue from our customer base. Our cost of customer acquisition is much, much lower than that of a standalone online business.”

 To maximize revenues and ensure fast, quality service, NPM has developed a proprietary Lead Distribution Platform. This state-of-the-art technology backbone matches customers with the NPM retail network on a real-time basis. The technology is designed to provide instantaneous distribution of qualified leads to the NPM network members.

“We have thoroughly scaled and tailored our lead distribution technology to maximize revenues and lower overall customer acquisition costs,” says Behnam Behrouzi, NPM vice president and chief technology officer. “We have the capability to seamlessly distribute billions of dollars of demand to our retailers and service providers on a monthly basis. We offer the flexibility to send them only the number of consumers they can handle while their business grows. For consumers, this technology quickly gives them multiple competitive quotes from the most qualified sources. It saves them countless hours and hassles and they get the best deals on the product or the service they are interested in.”

Zamani expects to grow NPM significantly in the next several months, expanding the NPM network with businesses that have the bandwidth and customer service capability to provide high value throughout the all life stages of the consumer.

Next Phase Media, Inc. (www.nextphasemedia.com) is the premiere online referral source for qualified business services, leads and professionals. The privately held company is headquartered in Walnut Creek, California, with offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.