Foundation

World2000 87Horizontal and vertical marketplacesHorizontal marketplaces specialise in one or several categories of products and services: equipment suppliesand goods, corporate services, transactional services… They target all companies or other sectorialmarketplaces for which they play the role of service provider. The most advanced among them can undertaketo fully organise a process or a profession: logistics (such as CargoWeb and Freightmarket), managingadvertising, maintenance, human resources… Players such as OnVia.com and Citicorp (via the Bizzed.comsite) federate some of these functions in order to offer SMEs a range of products and services geared tofulfilling their main daily operational requirements.Sector-based or vertical marketplaces mainly target companies from a given sector of activity. Their goal is tomaster their understanding of the sector's practices and trade channels, to identify sources of inefficiency andto offer solutions. It is in this category that the greatest number of e-marketplaces have emerged, althoughtheir development has been both unequal and problematic. While some marketplaces are growingsuccessfully with little fanfare, notably in the field of raw materials and energy trade, others are struggling justto get off the ground.Financial results obtained by several vertical marketplacesEmerge InteractiveIntegration of the value chain for the American beef industry.• Overall market: $40 billion• Creation date: 1998• 3rd quarter 2000:- TO: $277 million- 632,800 heads of cattle sold- Gross margin: $3.7 million (turnover takes account of the value of livestock sold)- Losses: $7.3 millionVentroOperates primarily Chemdex, a marketplace for life sciences industries (pharmaceutics, biology) and Promedix,specialised in medical supplies. Serves only the United States.• Creation date: 1997 (Chemdex), 2000 (Ventro)• 3rd quarter 2000:- TO: $25.2 million- 37,000 registered users- Gross margin: $1.8 million (TO takes account of the value of the products sold)- Losses: $119.6 million• 4th quarter 2000:- Ventro dissolves its own marketplaces and becomes a marketplace service provider.Altra Energy SystemsWorld-wide marketplace for the energy industry• Overall market: $1,800 billion• Creation date: 1997• 7,000 professionals from 500 countries, 4,500 offers and requests posted each day• August 2000: 19 million Mwh of electricity, 28 million barrels of natural gas traded• $12 billion worth of transactions expected for 2000 ($6.9 billion in 1999)• 1999 TO (commissions): $40 million© IDATE www.idate.fr