Faster, faster. Pristine's first service was the Pristine Day Trader, an advisory newsletter for small investors and professional brokers. The newsletter, which costs $1,100 per year, gets faxed or emailed daily to more than 2,000 subscribers in 38 countries. But even satisfied customers began sending a message: A daily news feed just wasn't immediate enough. In March 1996, the firm introduced the Pristine Daily Hotline. For $225 per month, subscribers can dial a toll-free number twice a day and hear recorded messages about hot stocks and market trends. "That still wasn't enough for people," says Velez, "So we got into another medium."
Enter the Real Time Trading Room, which debuted on June 23, 1997 at a price of $525 per month. "Chat is the perfect tool for us," says Velez. "We are one of the first stock-market advisers to offer minute-by-minute guidance." The service already has more than 400 subscribers in 32 countries. Velez vows to cap the number at 500: "We're real sticklers about limiting participation. We don't want too many people rushing to make the same trades."
Talking Points
Pristine's online conversation is less than a year old, but it's already lively and informative. Velez and Capra offer frequent updates during trading hours. They post premarket commentary before the exchanges open and postmarket remarks after they close. The service receives more than 200 subscriber questions every day. Indeed, Velez insists that his firm is in the education business, not the stock-picking business. "Our customers don't just want to know what they should do," he says. "They want to know why." And chat is a powerful tool for education: "It puts hundreds of people right in our trading room. They get direct access to our ideas."
Tech Talk
Like Hand Technologies, Pristine is an ichat customer. It cost Pristine $15,000 to create the trading room, and the firm pays ichat $1,000 per month to host the chats - not bad for a service that helps generate annual revenues of nearly $5 million!
Coordinates: Oscar Velez, president@pristine.com; www.pristine.com
Heath Row hrow@fastcompany.com is an associate editor at Fast Company. He's always available for a chat.
Email
Digg
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Buzz Up!
LinkedIn
