Let's Go Cyber-Shopping

If the Web pundits are right, there's a new Mall of America being built -- in cyberspace. Forrester Research estimates that consumers logged $530 million worth of online transactions last year. It expects that figure to surpass $7 billion by the end of the decade. The Yankee Group, another leading market researcher, is even more optimistic. It estimates that online shopping will exceed $10 billion by the year 2000.

You don't have to buy these predictions to appreciate that online shopping has finally arrived. Onsale Inc., the fast-growing electronic auction house, has logged more than 1 million visits since it opened less than two years ago. Jumbo!, the self-proclaimed biggest site on the Web, offers more than 100,000 software programs and receives more than 1.5 million visits a month.

Most of the here-and-now excitement about online shopping involves computer products. That's no surprise. "Why did we start by auctioning computers?" says Onsale CEO Jerry Kaplan. "Because the one thing we know about our customers is that they're sitting at their computers. They are, by definition, computer buyers."

Is it time for you to use technology to buy technology? Fast Company evaluated the state of Internet retailing with an online shopping spree to collect digital essentials for the well-equipped office. We went in search of a powerful computer, a collection of must-have peripherals, basic software for business users, and a few items to keep us entertained. We spent about $3,400 -- and lots of hours in front of the screen.

Here's a report on where we shopped, what we bought, and what we learned about The Experience:. You decide whether you're ready to visit the virtual mall.

Going, Going, Gone

Shopper's Paradise: Onsale Inc. (www.onsale.com), the Web's leading electronic auction service. The site, based in Mountain View, California, held its first auction in May 1995. Since then it has sold 200,000 items. It's a digital bargain hunter's dream. Think Filene's Basement for the Net.

What's in Stock: A huge assortment of discontinued and refurbished equipment: computers, scanners and printers, and much more. Don't confuse discontinued with dysfunctional. There's plenty of good stuff here.

How to Buy: Like every store in cyberspace, Onsale is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But if you want to make a bid, you must time your moves with Onsale's auction schedule. The site runs three auctions a week.

The auction process is straightforward. Find the product you want and click on "bid." You'll learn when the auction closes, what the current high bids are, and the minimum increments required for new bids. If you're not a registered user, Onsale lets you sign up on the spot. You don't have to monitor the auction in real time. Just make a bid and start checking email. Onsale sends a message when someone outbids you. You can increase your bid via email or return to the site for more details.

Our Shopping Cart: A high-powered desktop computer built by a little-known company in Carbondale, Illinois. The CD Masters PC includes a Pentium 200 MMX chip, 64 megabytes of RAM, a 3.8 gigabyte hard drive, and a 33.6 voice/fax/data modem. The price tag was $1,875 (plus $45 for shipping and handling).

The Experience: We saved more than $500 off the best price we could find at any nonauction shopping site. Plus we had fun! CEO Kaplan calls Onsale "an interactive economic game" that's "part QVC, part Price Club, part stock market." It's not a bad description.

We arrived 10 minutes late to an auction that began at 6 PM EST on a Monday. The minimum bid was $750. Bidders had already raised the ante to $1,800. We bid $1,825 and led the pack.

Early Wednesday morning an email arrived. We'd been outbid! We increased our bid by $25, enough to get us back in the hunt. Late Wednesday afternoon, 30 minutes before the auction closed, we visited Onsale to watch the finale in real time. At 5:59 PM, 1 minute before closing, BT of New York City bid $1,875 and knocked us off the list. We matched BT's price (there were four computers up for bid), knocked someone else off the list, and started watching the clock. Going, going, gone. Time to celebrate. A few hours later we received an email confirming our win.

The Fine Print: You won't find top hardware models from big-name manufacturers such as Compaq and IBM. And it literally takes days -- although only a few minutes per day -- to win an auction.

Other Sites: The Web is full of auction sites, but none offers Onsale's product selection or traffic. Of course, fewer bidders means less competition. Visit AuctionPC (www.auctionpc.com), Cyberswap (www.cyberswap.com), and Cybersale (www.infopoint.com:80/auctions/cybersale).