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A multi-channel retail model in
the party supplies industry with
retail stores, catalog and the Internet
Services
Retail
AMEX: IPT
iParty Corp.
1457 VFW Parkway
West Roxbury, MA 02132
Sal Perisano
Chairman and
Chief Executive Officer
Interview conducted by:
Walter Banks, Co-Publisher
CEOCFOinterviews.com
February 2001
BIO OF CEO
Mr. Perisano was the
co-founder of The Big Party, a national chain of 51 party superstores. Mr. Perisano has 25
years of management experience in merchandising and retailing. In 1981, he co-founded
Videosmith, which became Boston's dominant video retailer. In 1989 Videosmith was sold to
a publicly traded company called Xtra-vision PLC, which owned 250 stores throughout the
U.K. and Ireland. Mr. Perisano stayed on as director and was later named Chief Executive
of the parent company, which was subsequently acquired by Blockbuster Video. Mr. Perisano
holds a B.A. from Boston College and an M.A. from Harvard University.
About iParty
IParty Corp.’s Website,
iParty.com
From children's birthday parties to
weddings, from Super Bowl parties to Halloween, iParty uses the Internet to make it easy
and convenient for consumers to plan and give fabulous parties. iParty is the ultimate
resource for party givers to exchange ideas about parties, select themes, make
comprehensive plans, and purchase all of the goods and services for a successful event.
Planning
and executing a successful party requires creativity, organization, time, and travel -
usually multiple trips, first to view goods and services, then to pick-up orders. iParty's
mission is to provide you, the party giver, with a simple, seamless transaction process so
that you can accomplish all of the following in an easy, uncomplicated manner in one
place, 24 hours per day:
- get advice from experts
- exchange information with other party
givers
- select an exciting theme
- shop for all the goods and services you
need
- pay for everything at once at the
check-out counter
- return to check your order status
- obtain fast, reliable customer service
We
believe that iParty is unique. We know of no other company, on-line or conventional, that
offers the comprehensive array of content, services and goods that iParty will provide
through a single gateway. Even if the individual elements that comprise iParty were
available separately on the Internet or elsewhere, the party giver would have to visit
dozens of sites and make dozens of phone calls to replicate what can be done at iParty in
one transaction.
CEOCFOinterviews - Mr.Perisano, please give
us a brief history of iParty?
Mr.Perisano: "The company was incorporated in l998. When I joined it early in
l999, it was already a public entity. After
it was incorporated, a reverse merger into a public shell was
effected and the company picked up a bulletin board
listing. Very soon thereafter, we proceeded to raise about twenty nine million dollars. At
the end of l999, we applied for a listing on the American Stock Exchange. We were actually the first company listed
on the American Stock Exchange in the year 2000. In l999, we spent most of our time
building our site, having engaged a company to assist us in that effort. We opened the
site for business in October of l999 and clipped the last part of the Halloween season. Shortly thereafter we concluded that we should
proceed with, at least, one other channel - a catalog.
We published our first catalog in April of 2000.
We believed that in this category, if not in all of the commerce, our company would
be better able to proceed if it had some terrestrial reality
that was linked to its virtual business. That
opportunity came up in the summer of 2000, when we had a chance to purchase assets of a
retail chain of stores, that I left two years before.
We began a competitive bid process to acquire the assets of what was then known as
The Big Party, which was founded in l992 by my wife Dorice Dionne and me. We grew it to 51
stores and in the middle of l998 we made an arrangement with our board of directors to
leave the company. As part of our deal, we made a “carve out” in our non-compete
agreement to be able to pursue Internet and direct marketing in this industry. This
industry, by the way is a 12 billion a year industry, and 99% of it is retail.
CEOCFOinterviews - Is your future in retail?
Mr.Perisano: "Yes. The biggest
revenue producer this year will be retail."
CEOCFOinterviews – Will it be the same three
years from now?
To
receive a complete copy of this interview call: 570-839-0236 |
