New Digital Age Targets 50-Plus Boomers With Online Point & Shop Mall

Business Wire, Sept 23, 1998

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 23, 1998--TLS Media, publishers of Digital Age, a new magazine aimed at explicating personal technology for users "who weren't born yesterday" (age 50 ), has signed with Internet Tradeline, Inc. (ITI) to produce an online Point & Shop mall for its retail advertisers.

The upscale quarterly publication, which had its debut in July, promises to remain jargon-free yet deliver to its readers news they can use about various technologies, chief among them personal computers and the Internet.

"Our readers are not interested in reading about how much RAM they should buy," says Grant Opperman, TLS Media president. "Rather, they're asking for information on how to manage their portfolios on line, where to travel, how to send photos to their kids in college, things like that." A natural outgrowth of that was linkage with the Point & Shop malls, to harness the buying power of this fast-growing age demographic, Opperman adds.

Conventional marketing wisdom long has had it that the 29 to 49 year old age demographic is the one with the strongest buying power, but as "baby boomers" age, their economic muscle is increasing, not decreasing, Opperman says. "These people are at the peak of their purchasing power, and they use their computers to enhance their lifestyle. We recognize Internet Tradeline's superior ability to facilitate transactions, from designing the retailers' websites to processing purchases," says Opperman. "Our relationship with ITI solved a large problem--it's helped us get into something that we felt was important but without diverting our attention from the core of what we do," says Opperman.

With Point & Shop, merchants are provided with turnkey, e-commerce enabled stores, which they can update by changing prices and specials as often as they like and as easily as filling out a form. Together, they form an online mall of local merchants, linked through a newspaper's website. Retailers need a personal computer with Internet access and must have the capability to process credit card sales and fulfill orders.

Now in its fourth year, Internet Tradeline specializes in the creation and deployment of online communities providing powerful yet affordable e-commerce solutions. The company markets web-based commerce sites to small and medium-sized businesses, and typically organizes and promotes them by geography, industry or strategic trading partner. Internet Tradeline is a leader among Silicon Alley new media companies in New York.