MINING MORE THAN JUST DATA
The Beverly Hillbillies weren’t the only ones who saw a bright future in black gold. Realizing that there’s a worldwide market worth some U.S. $200 billion in mining and oil/gas exploration equipment, a company in Canada has developed what it thinks will serve as an all-encompassing system to dig up and match equipment and service buyers and sellers all over the world.
After a bit of planning and the signing of agreements with Sun Microsystems and Netscape, Toronto-based Intelligent Detection Systems (IDS) launched Geo-Portal.com last month, an online system for mining, geophysics and exploration professionals to access the services of 2,500 vendor companies worldwide through its Web sites.
The company’s two sites – GeophysicsOnline.com and MineOnline.com – have catalogs of more than 2.5 million products and services whose online purchases can be paid for either through conventional credit cards, electronic data transfer, letters of credit or “purchase cards” (for higher-end buying) provided by Scotiabank.com, the online unit of the Bank of Nova Scotia.
IDS CEO Mariusz Rybak says there are about 20,000 potential customers worldwide. Ninety percent, he notes, are small companies that “cannot afford to set up systems like ours.”
Features include a gateway to Geo-Portal’s marketplace, which offers all sorts of mining and exploration gear, as well as consulting services, industry-specific content and geophysics survey data on top of personalized business news updates, stock quotes, sports scores and, of course, weather.
“This information is important,” says Rybak, “because excavations can happen in remote areas of the world and executives in New York, for example, need to know whether they can send out a crew in rural Chile.”
In addition to having global reach, Geo-Portal.com claims using its sites is a better bargain than more conventional sales methods. Products and services sold through IDS’s sites – like seismic information, gravity meters and other geological equipment – are often sold at margins exceeding 25%. Rybak says IDS takes brokerage commissions for successful transactions at rates of between 10% and 25%.
In addition to advertising through its Web portal deals, the company plans to run some ads in mining, oil and gas trade publications as well as to exhibit at a trade show or two.
While Rybak shies away from projecting revenue, he is confident the new ventures will make a profit in 2000. Following the lead of numerous other dot-coms, the firm plans to launch an initial public stock offering later in the year, as well as to hunt for more venture capital funding stateside, where more money is generally available than in Canada.
“Our goal is to be the number one source of information, products and services for mining and exploration professionals, no matter where they’re located,” he says.
