UKNM: Virgin on E-commerce

[Steve Johnston/IMRG]

We have been surprised by some of the private and public responses we have 

had from individuals both on and off list and outside this particular 

circle of influence following The Telegraph piece two weeks ago. We feel it 

necessary to reaffirm our motivations in this matter.


1.      We stand by the justification for the survey we launched. We felt 

that there was a naivety to Branson's statement that could be damaging to 

industry progress - by setting investment expectations. We hold the view 

that a �50m investment across the whole group is insufficient to enable 

Virgin to become "the biggest provider of Net services in Britain within a 

couple of years" let alone "take on the Americans and beat them". We also 

believe that senior executives - particularly CEOs - need hands-on 

experience of e-commerce for their companies to successfully exploit these 

opportunities. Our curiosity about industry opinions was genuine and the 

survey was light-hearted in what we hoped would be an engaging manner. The 

responses themselves were surprising and it was this surprise that prompted 

the approach to Virgin. 


2.      We had no expectation of winning business when we approached 

Richard Branson. Our offer to help is part of what the IMRG does. The IMRG 

is an industry group (not a web developer) which spends a good deal of its 

time lobbying big businesses to take e-commerce more seriously or at least 

talk about it in public with some credibility. Often this is only effective 

when it is done in a 'plain-speaking' manner. So the concerns expressed 

about our business methods were misplaced. Sure, we'd like to have Virgin 

in as a member, but sometimes there are bigger issues at stake.


The results of our survey can be viewed here: 

http://www.imrg.org/survey/index.htm . 

(The survey was swamped by one visitor on Feb 18th. The figures available 

above have been corrected).


Steve Johnston

Director of Development

IMRG (Interactive Media in Retail Group)

http://www.imrg.org/

+44 (0)7000 46 46 74, ( 07000 Go IMRG )

steveimrg [dot] org

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