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BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE: Business Week ebiz | |||||||||||||||||
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The Web Software Wunderkind from Germany's East Success on the Net and in America has made Intershop's Stephan Schambach a model for east German entrepreneurs Stephan Schambach has come further than most people in the past 10 years. When the clock struck midnight in New York City on Dec. 31, it was e-commerce software produced by Intershop Inc., where the 29-year-old German is CEO, that was running TimesSquare2000.com, the official Web site of New York's New Year's celebration. A little more than a decade earlier, Schambach, who was born in East Germany, had celebrated an even more momentous event: the collapse of the Berlin Wall. For Schambach, the end of the Old World Order came suddenly. A student at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, he had been sent to a computer trade show in Leipzig called the Fair of the Masters of Tomorrow. He attended seminars by day and marched in anti-government demonstrations by night. Then, on the day East Germany opened its borders, he ran to the train station and made it to Berlin in time to help tear down the Wall. "I had one hell of a party," Schambach recalls. FORCED INTO PHYSICS. But while the physical barriers between east and west had crumbled, Schambach discovered there were plenty of hurdles remaining for a 19-year-old who dreamed of being a computer entrepreneur -- but had been forced by university officials to study physics. There was no blueprint for starting a company in East Germany, no business infrastructure, no venture-capital firms. That was until he came along. Now, thanks to Schambach, others have a beacon to follow. "We're looked on as the model of how companies could grow on their own and not take subsidies," says Intershop Chief Financial Officer Wilfried Beeck, a West German who joined the company shortly after it was formed in 1994. "Stephan is a true East German success story."
Schambach isn't satisfied yet, though. The company just launched a new product called Intershop Enfinity that offers much more than its basic e-shop software, which was designed to operate simple Web shops for small companies. Companies that use Enfinity can sell through affiliate sites, take orders from new devices like smart cell phones, and synchronize incoming orders with their accounting systems and supply chains. The software is designed to be installed in three months -- rather than the year or longer that it usually takes to set up such a complicated package. Enfinity sells for $250,000 to $2 million. "THE IDEAL PERSON." But how to get a foot in the door with large corporations? Schambach pulled that off by landing former Compaq CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer as chairman of Intershop's board last November. Pfeiffer's job is to get press attention and pitch Intershop's products to CIOs and CEOs. "With Eckhard we found the ideal person for the job," says Schambach. It took five months to persuade Pfeiffer to join up. Schambach first targeted him last spring, when he was still at Compaq. But Pfeiffer said he was too busy. After he was fired by the Compaq board for failing to take full advantage of the Internet, Pfeiffer cast about for new opportunities, and he thought of Schambach. During several meetings over a period of months, the deal was clinched. "What impressed me was his vision of what he saw as a great opportunity to build a company -- and the courage to immediately take it to America," says Pfeiffer.
Then came the big break. Executives from Deutsche Telekom, searching the U.S. for a supplier of software that it would use to power thousands of companies' e-commerce sites, ironically stumbled on Intershop, a German company that had come to America looking for customers. A software deal worth more than $10 million was struck in 1997. Now, Intershop has similar hosting deals with more than 200 telecoms and Internet service providers worldwide. Last November, on the anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Schambach visited Berlin to take part in commemorations with the likes of George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Helmut Kohl. "Now I really want to focus on the future," says Schambach. "But I haven't forgotten where I came from." Considering the journey Schambach has taken, you can't blame him for enjoying the thought of how far he's gone. Hamm is Business Week's Software editor in New York. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ |
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Stephan Schambach, CEO of Intershop RELATED ITEMS BW e.biz, Oct. 1, 1999: "Yes, Eckhard Pfeiffer Does 'Get' the Net" BW e.biz, Dec. 13, 1999: "The Net Is Finally Catching Eurodollars" WEB POINTERS Click here to visit some of the sites mentioned in the story: Intershop TimesSquare2000.com Concentric PSINet Deutsche Telekom Bosch | ||||||||||||
