SUCCESS STORY

Ronald M. Friedman Ronald Friedman is president of DollarDays.com, a B2B site for independent business owners, mainly retailers, searching for close-out products. The site connects the country's largest close-out distributors with millions of independent and home-based businesses. "Dollardays is hopefully leveling the playing field for the [small business] owner by offering a vast catalog of discounted products on a 24/7 basis," Friedman said. "It is well recognized the business owner of today faces many challenges from major chain competition in local markets," he said. The initial Web site for DollarDays.com was "a testing ground for us," said Lance Singleton, senior vice president of sales. "How viable was the Internet? How do you market in the vast world of the Web?" The site's beginnings were modest, Singleton said, while the company sought answers to those questions. "Our humble beginning used the simplest of technology, basically static pages and a third party 'shopping cart,'" Singleton said. "As the customer base grew," he continued, "we began to explore and develop a site that could be more automated and easier to maintain. After extensive research in platforms, hardware, midddleware and software we began to develop our second site. Primarily, we decided to develop 'in-house' with the assistance of contract programming." Singelton said that a primary goal was to develop a site that was easy to use and allowed a minimum of clicks to make a purchase. The site incorporates a "logic" from the perspective of a customer: category and department layout, feature items, specials and deals, suggested selling prices with projected margins and shipping information. Since the official launch, the coding has been virtually re-written to improve performance and the company is in the final stages of integrating its business system. Once this is complete, a full line of reporting tools will be added. Several other enhancements are "on the board," Singleton said, including more security features; vendor information and communication automation; an in-house mail system; and a portal-like information section for current news, tips, and stock quotes. Friedman began his career in the motion picture and video industry. He was subsequently introduced to the Chairman of the Board of Superscope, Inc., the exclusive distributor of the Sony product line for the western world. Other product lines under this corporate umbrella were Marantz, Superscope, Tele-Story and Rentabeta. He then worked as Chief Operating Officer and Vice President of two divisions of this publicly-held company. Friedman was also a founder of Video Alliance America, Inc. the national buying group for thousands of independent video retailers throughout America.

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