About Cyberspace HQ Distribution

ESD Distribution...
It is fair to say that Cyberspace HQ is one of the grand daddies of the e-commerce gig. Our first e-commerce transaction was made in 1993. At the time, we ran a bulletin board service under a platform called Excalibur. It was, without question, the precursor to the Web. It looked quite a bit like the web, except that it was much more full-featured than what the web gives us today.

Excalibur more closely resembled something like what America Online is today, except that smaller private firms ran it. Many companies used it for their Intranet, and even more hoped to use it to be the next AOL.

Our niche in the day was graphics. We designed the user interface for such corporate Intranets as MCI, The U.S. Naval Reserve, Nike and hundreds of others.

Before we knew it, our system was home to thousands of SysOps (webmasters of the day). As you might imagine, in '93 and '94, the e-business world was pretty small. Software developers who wrote applications for Excalibur systems couldn't help but see the opportunity in the focused traffic we had. We began focusing on esd distribution of software (we called it 'online' distribution at the time).

In late 1993, we opened our first store on the web, offering Sysops the ability to order product on our BBS system, as well as our new 'web site'. Believe it or not, that was pretty cool at the time... Wow, they even have a web site! If only we could have images on the web, now that would be cool! ::that came later that year::

By early 1995, Cyberspace HQ offered more than 130 products, and was home to more than ten thousand SysOps -- a mind-numbing number at the time. The power! The leverage! The worldwide network of online distribution sites! But man o man... that world wide web was getting pretty popular!

As 1995 continued on, more and more of our customers were becoming Internet Service Providers, and fewer and fewer were building the next AOL. We decided it was better to move with the market, rather than dying on the vine. We began in-house development of two products: Nic O'Matic and DeEnesse. Both fit the target of the direction our typical customer was going.

By 1997, the web had won the war, and the BBS System lost appeal. We finally shut down the Excalibur system and put even more focus on our own software development. By this time, our website was beyond mature, and most of our sales were from the web. In the same year, we released our third in-house product: AddWeb Website Promoter.

By 1998, AddWeb was clearly our new claim to fame, and as such, we concentrated in that direction. In the years to come, AddWeb would become the #1 selling Internet program in the United States, and would be the roots of a physical distribution infrastructure we have managed to build.

So, when it comes to experience in ESD, we are pretty difficult to match. We were processing Internet transactions and doing fraud screening when most of the planet thought the web was nothing more than a place for a spider to live. We were sending automated e-mail confirmations when the large web hosting companies boasted 50 accounts.

That thing that makes us different
Republishing and distribution agreements go sour more often than not. The simple reason for this is ignorance. The developer doesn't understand the risks the publisher/distributor takes, and the cash outlay they make. The distributor/publisher doesn't understand the time and heart that goes into writing software. They fail to see that the relationship between a developer and his software is similar to parent/child. In so many cases, a communication breakdown occurs, which destroys the relationship.

If you have read above, you will note that Cyberspace HQ has experience on both sides of this fence. We are a developer, a publisher, and a distributor. We have been on the developer's side of both distribution and publishing agreements, and we have seen where the breakdowns occur. However, we also boast experience in the role of publisher and distributor. All of this gives us not only an objective view, but allows us the unique ability to communicate issues with the developer's perspective in mind. Most publishers and distributors are honest in their practice, but their failure to communicate issues properly causes a level of mistrust that usually ends in a breakdown.