Buy.com, one of Orange County's most successful Internet companies,
will also be filed plans to raise about $150M from the public market.
They're located in Aliso Viejo, about 30 minutes (with traffice as
you have to go through the El Toro Y) south of UCI. They are the 4th
largest Internet retailer and the largest that's still privately held.
The company is famous for it's below cost selling of items and making
it up on ad revenue generated from visitors to the site. This is an
idea that has not quite panned out, as over the last 12 months, Buy.com
has lost nearly $100M on $450M of sales. It's unclear whether this
is a long term sustainable business model or whether they will ever
break even before the next decade.
Other famous OC companies that have gone public include Ingram Micro ($288M),
Autobytel.com ($103M), and Broadcom ($84M).
The neat part about the article is that they list the top 10 Internet retailers
based on estimated revenue:
eBay Inc. $1,100-$1,300
Amazon.com Inc. 1,000-1,100
Dell Computer Corp. 500-600
Buy.com 350-400
OnSale Inc. 300-350
Gateway Inc. 250-300
Egghead.com Inc. 150-200
Barnnesandnoble.com 125-175
CDNow.com Inc. 125-175
America Online Inc. 100-150
-- Greg Bolcer email: gbolcer@endtech.com web: http://www.endtech.com work: 714.505.4970 cell: 714.928.5476 fax: 603.994.0516