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Good on paper

Conservationists might love electronic books — hand-held reading devices that download literature from the Internet — because they don’t use paper, but readers hate them for the same reason. Cambridge, Mass.-based E Ink, a company founded by a professor and two students at MIT, is working to address both concerns: It is developing an electronic ink that consists of millions of tiny capsules, each with a diameter the width of a human hair, inside which are thousands of even tinier white particles suspended in dark fluid. These are placed on special paper that is no thicker than conventional paper. Apply an electric charge to selected capsules and the particles come to the surface, enabling words and images to be formed on the paper. The text remains there, without the need of back-lighting or power, but disappears when new text is downloaded. These ultramodern books will have the look and feel of their ancient predecessors. “A lot of people think this is science fiction,” Jim Juliano, E Ink’s CEO told USA Today, but he predicted the books would be available within five years.

Electronic surveillance

What are kids wearing in Los Angeles? Are stripes still showing up on the fashion runways? An Internet service is providing those answers and more, in seconds, helping retailers keep tabs on fashion trends around the world. For an annual fee of about $3,000, Worth Global Style Network gives subscribers access to pictures of department-store windows in 20 cities worldwide, offers a front-seat view at all the important fashion events and shows what kids are wearing in discos. The information is gathered by hundreds of photographers, reporters, analysts and designers. The site, www.wgsn.com, counts among its clients Giorgio Armani, Target and Estée Lauder.

Online privacy

Online retailers are increasingly following the example of traditional retailers by producing private-label merchandise to boost profits and better control their inventories. This past spring, Ashford.com, which sells apparel, jewelry and other merchandise, introduced its Ashford Collection of jewelry manufactured exclusively for Ashford, and it plans to do the same for pens, scarves and leather goods. Likewise, Chipshot.com manufactures its own golf clubs; Furniture.com has begun selling its own brand of furniture; and a host of other products, from diamonds to dog food, are bearing dot-com private-label names.

“It gives retailers greater control of sales and marketing,” Bruce Van Kleeck, vice president of the National Retail Federation, told The New York Times. “And obviously, it’s significantly more profitable.”

It can’t be the food ...

The United States is way ahead of Europe when it comes to e-tailing but lags far behind Britain in online sales of food and wine, according to Boston Consulting Group, Cambridge, Mass. But America’s leading online food retailer, Peapod of Skokie, Ill., sold only $70 million worth of groceries in 1999, a pittance compared with the $200 million of food and wine that Tesco, Britain’s biggest grocery chain, sold over the Internet. Tesco’s stores cover the country, and quickly embraced the Web, Marcus Bokkerink, vice president at Boston Consulting Group’s London office, told SCT. “The off-line [U.K.] grocery shopping industry is concentrated, so an individual player can have a lot of impact,” he said. “In the U.S., even if an incumbent had moved early, it wouldn’t have had the same impact.”