MIVA

Web site: www.miva.com

ISOs everywhere are clamoring for e-commerce solutions that not only answer all their merchant needs but also make money. From a humble html scripting- based beginning to a repositioning around a more lucrative e-commerce environment, one company has clearly emerged from the pack to provide unparalleled software, technology and services. Its name is Miva - inspired from a book of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

With a name easy to pronounce and no significant meaningful reference to the e-commerce marketplace, Miva is defined by the vision of its co- founders, Joe Austin, President/ CEO, and Troy McCasland, Executive Vice President. From its inception in 1996, they devoted long hours to engineering and re-engineering, configuring and creating. The results: Miva Merchant, Miva Now, Miva 4.0, Miva 3.0, Miva Order, Miva Empresa, Miva Commerce Server, Miva Script and Miva Mia.

"We looked at the marketplace and knew we could build it better," Austin says.

And so they have.

Miva was designed from the ground up to specifically meet the needs of small- to medium-size merchants, the core focus of the company. A storefront-development management system enabling anyone to build a robust e-commerce suite using nothing more than a browser, Miva works from the premise that anyone who knows their business and understands a browser can build their own Web site.

However, for those professionals who missed Computer 101, Miva also offers a base of hundreds of developers that provide specialized services for those less technically inclined merchants. Miva does the best of both worlds.

How exactly does Miva do it? Consider its unique products and services.

Miva Merchant makes building and managing consumer and e-business catalogs as easy as point, click and fill in the blanks. Its browser-based management lets merchants control all aspects of their storefront, from product maintenance to category management to order and credit card processing.

Miva Now is the storefront network providing instant online access for merchants and significantly reducing the time and upfront costs associated with building an e-commerce site. It also offers ISOs a risk-free way to increase sales of their merchant services.

ISOs can attract new merchants with a compelling message: "Build your store now, start selling immediately - first 30 days free!" New merchants connecting to Miva Now can register and begin building their storefront in less than five minutes.

After 30 days, upon merchant favorable evaluation, the new merchant and the completed storefront are automatically transferred to a Miva hosting partner, and the ISO is paid a $100 referral fee. In addition to the ISO referral revenue opportunity, the system enhances the marketing efforts of ISOs by reducing customer acquisition costs and accelerating online transaction processing

For ISOs to make Miva a value-added feature in their merchant-services packages, they must have a Web site. For those ISOs who do not have Web sites, Miva gladly will refer any ISO to a qualified Web designer.

With a Web site, an ISO establishes an affiliate code with Miva by going to Miva's site and filling out an application. Miva gives the ISO a code to drop into his or her Web site. ISOs can then go to each of their merchants, have them fill out a form online and, within seconds, set up a storefront for immediate transactions. In return, the merchants get 30 days of e- commerce transactions at no cost.

After the free 30-day trial period, with a click of a button the entire storefront transparently transfers to one of Miva's hosting partners. Merchants then pay a monthly host fee at a very competitive rate. Miva tags all merchants going into its system with specific hosting partners on a round-robin basis.

"While the hosts are comparable, each one is slightly different, so we strive to make the best match," Austin says. "For example, if an ISO's merchant is card service-oriented, we would not associate that merchant with a host other than one that supports card service. We carefully pre- select a host for each merchant."

Customizing merchant storefronts, Miva Now is the shell that wraps around Miva's star attraction - Miva 4.0.

Miva Merchant 4.0 is the hot, upgraded software that runs on the Miva Now network. Allowing merchants to go online while providing account management, catalog management, merchandising order fulfillment and reporting tools, Miva 4.0's new features include affiliate program capability (a special tool providing for the merchants themselves to create their own affiliate programs by linking other businesses to the merchant's storefront), inventory tracking, simple administration interfacing through easy-to-use wizards, attribute templates and instant site traffic and sales statistics tracking - especially valuable to merchants who have that need to know now.

Miva 4.0 also integrates the leading payment-processing services, including Card Services, VeriSign, Paradata, CSI Linkpoint and AuthorizeNet. Miva Merchant 4.0 is distributed with Miva Empresa, the engine that enables Web servers to run Miva applications on a variety of platforms, including BSDi, Cobalt RaQ, Cobalt Qube2, DECUNIX, FreeBSD, Linux libc, Windows NT / 2000, SCO, SGI IRIX and Sun Solaris.

According to Miva, small business is booming, and many of these new ventures are establishing an online presence only. Miva estimates that the number of small merchants on the Internet will increase 40 percent by the year 2004, to almost 3 million online merchants.

Once merchants go online, they have a real incentive to use their credit card account. Miva Now is a sales tool for ISOs to help sell merchant accounts and also pick up a residual account by enabling merchants to put up another selling location - an e-commerce storefront. Miva Now is the sales tool for ISOs to get a piece of that 3 million online merchant market.

As for Miva 4.0, there are two ways to acquire the Miva Merchant software. If a merchant already has a server, the retail price to drop in Miva 4.0 is $595. Of course, the more economic avenue for the merchant is to come in through Miva Now via an ISO, build a storefront using Miva software and transfer to a host in 30 days.

Miva Now is free to merchants because the host pays the licensing fee. The only cost to the merchant is a monthly host fee, after 30 days. For merchants already using Miva 3.0, there is a $129 upgrade fee to 4.0.

Austin says his company is in a class by itself, literally.

"We own 95 percent of the small and midsize business-hosting market," says Austin. "We don't see anyone else doing this today. Miva is the dominant player by a long shot. Even our competitors identify us as number one. If you ask our competitors who is the one to beat, they all say us."

According to Austin, "If you were to take the top 40 hosting companies, grading them by number of domains/customers, 36 of those companies are using Miva (and) 30 use Miva exclusively. In terms of percentage of hosts, if you were to take Miva's total number of hosts, we have the single largest collection of hosts - 4,000 hosting companies. Of those, 800 hosting companies use Miva software." Miva has 60,000 users.

Can anyone take advantage of Miva Now? "No," says Austin. "We have a restriction. In our license agreement we state that we will not service any site that offers products, service or information that is objectionable, illegal, offensive or expresses hatred."

Miva won't offer support for software these merchants have purchased. "We reserve the right to refuse any merchant," Austin says. "We will report an illegal site that comes into our tech-support center."

What Miva is most proud of is its longstanding relationship with ISOs.

"We have been working with ISOs since the beginning," Austin says. "We are reaching out to ISOs to help them form partnerships to better enable their merchants. We view ISOs as very much a peer to our other partnerships. It is very exciting for us to be speaking directly to the ISO organizations. Miva is a very customer-service-centric organization. We like ISOs because they touch the customer directly. Their size doesn't matter. What matters is that they are a quality organization that gives their customers the same service as we do."

Miva's goal is to have every ISO who has a Web site in the marketplace become a supporter and supplier.

"We can handle it," Austin says. "We are very, very good at this. We monitor our systems 24/7, supporting our software, our customers and our partners. Miva's partner programs incorporate technology, payment gateways, complementary marketing services builders, merchant service providers, consulting partners, Web site builders and training partners."

Headquartered in San Diego, Miva has 40 employees after its first international expansion, to Germany in December 2000. Miva also is working on next-generation products geared toward the service industry - restaurants, beauty shops, etc.

"This industry needs specialized software," Austin says. "We have new marketing software to better market their storefronts. We have new development tools that will help developers and consultants build better merchant storefronts . and ultimately better relationships."

For more information, visit www.miva.com.