(Doug Liewelyn):

"Hello, and welcome to practically everybody's favorite city, San Francisco. I'm Doug Liewelyn, and as you may know this area has long been considered the promise land. It was the lure of gold that brought the adventurers here, back in the mid 1800's and many of them found a mother load of economic opportunity. Well, for the Bay Area of today it is still much the same. Just consider Silicon Valley, home of the greatest legal creation of wealth at one place, at one time, in the history of the planet. Anyway you look at it, when it comes to business, San Francisco is great. Well we're about to explore this area, to meet with many of it's business leaders, executives, entrepreneurs, and visionaries who's ideas, products and services are having such a huge impact on the whole world. So, come along with us now as we explore the area around this great golden city by the bay, San Francisco."

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(Jim Lang):
"Welcome to a special edition of Global Business Trends. I'm Jim Lang and thanks for joining us."

(Bella Shaw):
"And I'm Bella Shaw. We are examining some of the latest examples of how new technologies and innovative ideas are changing the world around us, as we move into the new millennium. "

(Jim Lang):
"On this edition, we'll be focusing on one very uniquely qualified company that we think has set the Global Business Trends standard."

(Doug Liewelyn):
"The concept is called ec-OurCity. It stands for e-Commerce OurCity, and it represents a remarkable way for local communities like this, to keep their local citizen's dollars at home. It's the product of a technology based Web service company called e-Commerce Technology, and we learn the details from the CEO and President of the company, Dr. Yong Yao."

(Dr. Yao):
"Well the program is called ec-OurCity, program. ec-OurCity program is a program helping the local small business group together to collectively compete with Internet giant e-tailers."

(Doug Liewelyn):
"How does someone logging onto the Internet actually find these websites?"

(Dr. Yao):
"Well for example, you know, we are at Cupertino, the city of Cupertino. If you are a resident in the city of Cupertino you can just key in www.ec-cupertino.com, that will take you to your very own city mall. Where you can find all the merchants in your city and where you can find the people of different services, like auto body service, or the restaurant service or the product, like bicycles and you name it."

(Ken Drachnik):
"There's a big problem today with the small businesses and medium-sized businesses within cities worried about losing their business to the big e-tailers out on the Internet. So your book stores, your florists, your music stores are all concerned about how are they going to maintain their revenue and their income stream in the face of Amazon and all the big e-tailers out there. So, when we approach them with this concept, they're all very interested in how do they get involved and what can they do to get a presence on the Internet, so they can start competing."

(Dr. Yao):
"Let's take example of the city of Sunnyvale. We had the city support it, we had the Chamber of Commerce support it. For example, Chamber of Commerce put our news in the front page of their newsletter, and the city mailed out the brochure, we designed, you know it was titled ec-Sunnyvale.com to every single business in the city."

(Doug Liewelyn):
"And I understand your spreading this internationally now as well. Is that right?"

(Dr. Yao):
"That's correct. You know, thanks to the fantastic technology we have we can replicate the city mall in about an hour, and that's why we expanded this program to the three major metropolitan areas in United States, San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, and New York Metropolitan Areas. "

(David Fong):
"This is a complete platform for any business to do an e-commerce, or to do online business."

(Doug Liewelyn):
"You also make it possible for them to do credit card transactions, is that right?"

(David Fong):
"Yes, Yes, yeah we are very proud about this process, this is a real time credit card authorization process. So any user when they get on to the shop and when they purchase something, put that something into their shopping cart and then do a check out then when they enter the credit card number right there then we do a real time check on the number and then do the real time authorization, that will allow the shopping process to go on right away."

(Doug Liewelyn):
And you are the host for all these websites?

(David Fong):
"Yes, yes we have our server set up here and we have all the needed capacity to do fast connection and also all of our servers are secure, it's all certified."

(Dr. Yao):
"We also expand this program to China so right now we have 6 city malls up and running in china. "

(Doug Liewelyn):
"I gather you see a really big future for this."

(Dr. Yao):
"Yes, one of the great things is we created ec-scene, that scene is universally expandable, so we can expand this worldwide. If you name a big city, let's say London, Paris or Taipei, Tokyo, we have all the domain names reserved for the company. So we are aiming for big. You know, we have people come to us, you know, mention, you know, Yahoo is the portal for information. Hey, your guy makes a portal for the business. Yeah, so we are very excited about the program."

(Doug Liewelyn):
"The world of e-commerce is absolutely booming. Last years sales of some 20 billion dollars. In four years that number is supposed to reach somewhere around 200 billion dollars. Now thanks to this product from e-Commerce Technology local communities have a way to ensure they will be represented in this huge emerging marketplace, by keeping their local citizen's dollars at home."

(Jim Lang):
"That was a look at the operation of a company that we singled out as being at the very top of the list of Global Business Trends."

(Bella Shaw):
"There has been so much interest in this business since we first aired that profile, that we wanted to give you an even closer look at what it brings to the global marketplace."

(Doug Liewelyn):
"Because this whole subject of doing business on the web has turned into such a phenomenon, we've decided to extend out visit here at e-Commerce Technology and continue our conversation with the CEO and the President of the company, Dr. Yong Yao, to learn what other things this company does and is doing to help businesses conquer the web."

(Dr. Yao):
"As a business owner when you sell a product, and as a consumer when you buy a product besides except that commodity, like in CD's and books, you may not need to see the product, but for everything else you really need to see them in 3-dimensional. In a much more visually enhanced way before I can commit to buying. For example digital camera, I have to see the camera, how that look before I can do it. Or maybe I can even want to try online and see what the quality is, so that's one problem. How to let people view the product before they pay for it? The second problem is at that time when you have website if you want to change even a little price you have to go back to design house to change it for you. And business just cannot conduct that way. So that's the second problem. The third problem is the business owner they can afford to give you 5,000 dollars or 10,000 dollars to do their website. However, They cannot afford to spend millions of dollars to promote a site let people know their site. Like with the giant e-tailer they can spend, because they going to venture money, they can spend 10 million dollars to promote a site, but the small business cannot. So that is three very fundamental problems for local small media business. So, the foundation of this company, e-Commerce Technology, we try to solve these three fundamental problems for the e-commerce business. So that's why we developed the Net3D, we developed ec-ServicePro, and most important we created ec-OurCity platform. Where the businesses can group together with their city and they can compete. And also the city name brings the visibility to the local merchants."

(Doug Liewelyn):
"The remarkable story of e-Commerce Technology, a company that specializes in helping other businesses do business on the Web. I'm Doug Liewelyn reporting from Cupertino, California. " (Bella Shaw): "And that will do it for this special edition of Global Business Trends, the program that shows our viewers how businesses and industries function."

(Jim Lang):
"And how technology is rapidly changing and creating many new business opportunities. On behalf of our entire staff, I'm Jim Lang."

(Bella Shaw):
"And I'm Bella Shaw Thank you so much for watching."

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