Marketing
and Media Services
Retail
NASD: GENI
GenesisIntermedia.com, Inc.
Address: 5805 Sepulveda Blvd.
Van Nuys, CA 91411
Phone: 818 902 4100
www.genesisintermedia.com
Mr.
Ramy El-Batrawi
President
and
Chief Executive Officer
Interview conducted by:
Walter Banks
Co-Publisher
CEOCFOinterviews.com
February 2001
BIO OF CEO
Mr.
El-Batrawi is the principal stockholder and chief executive officer of
GenesisIntermedia.com, Inc. He
has been a director and chairman of the board of GenesisIntermedia.com,
Inc. since its inception in October 1993. Mr. El-Batrawi’s prior
experience had included international business marketing where he
facilitated and negotiated significant transactions between global
industrial companies and world governments. Firms with which he has been
involved include Lockheed Corporation, Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc.,
McDonalds Corporation and Eastern Airlines.
Additionally, he is the sole shareholder, President
and Chairman of the Board of Directors of several other companies,
including International Futures Brokerage Company, Mars & Venus
Counseling Centers, Inc., Genesis Aviation, Inc., Genesis Aviation II,
Inc., Genesis Diversified Investments, Inc., Sentient, Inc. and Trade
Your Way To Riches, Inc.
About GenesisIntermedia.com
GenesisIntermedia.com.
(GENI) is involved in several business lines revolving around the
marketing and advertising of consumer goods and services. The Company’s
main business lines are (a) direct sales and marketing of consumer
products, (b) interactive advertising and data mining in retail malls
under the Centerlinq brand, and (c) car rentals for the replacement market
under the Car Rental Direct brand. The Company strives to create a
portfolio of complementary business activities that build on the
Company’s traditional strengths in marketing consumer goods and
services. GenesisIntermedia.com markets through
several channels including television, print, radio, telemarketing and
retail outlets. The Company believes that significant opportunities exist
to build new platforms around e-commerce activities. As such, the Company
has recently dedicated significant financial and human resources to
develop and commercialize its Centerlinq product.
CEOCFOinterviews - Mr. El-Batrawi, can you
give us a history of Genesis
Intermedia.com and where you expect to be, three years from now.
Mr.El-Batrawi – “We started as a marketing company back in l993
and quickly became successful at marketing both our own and third party
products through different platforms such as television, print and radio
outlets. When the Internet
became more apparent as a marketing tool, we became interested in using it
as a marketing platform ourselves, so we acquired a company called Centerlinq,
which is a web-based interactive kiosk and advertising network.
We’ve placed the network in shopping malls and continue to generate a
growing amount of traffic. Our rationale for being in the malls is that
it’s a point of purchase environment, so it seemed like a perfect
channel to use the electronic media to deliver products. We now have over
40 million impressions a month in 37
malls.
As we were building Centerlinq, we found that our
management team could build other companies just as effectively.
Therefore, we now have a marketing kit to build companies, and
that's when we decided to start developing other technology companies, or
companies that can mix the Internet with brick and mortar. We bought Car
Rental Direct, which we feel is a sensible combination of brick and mortar
with advanced Internet capabilities. You can look at the car you want by
browsing the inventory, do the whole transaction on the Internet, and then
we deliver the car to you within 4 hours.”
CEOCFOinterviews -
Will the delivering of the rental cars be accomplished through
partnerships in each state or will you be opening your own car rental
operations through out the U.S?
Mr.El-Batrawi - “Our plan is to own the locations and the cars.
Therefore, we can open up locations in suburban areas and then
deliver the car directly to the customer.
We’ve started up in California, Arizona and Nevada and plan to
grow throughout the country. Customers will be able to do a car rental
through the Internet anywhere in the country one day.”
CEOCFOinterviews -Why are you so excited about Centerlinq?
Mr.El-Batrawi - “Centerlinq is very exciting, because we have
exclusive contracts with malls to install our public Internet access
portals. Other Internet companies have to spend millions of dollars to
bring people to their site. With
our portals located in malls across America, we are able to drive a great
deal of traffic to our site with very little expense to us, because we are
right in the middle of a huge amount of foot traffic.
Once we are installed and have spent the money to install that
network, the average one million people a month that traffic the mall have
access to the content on our kiosks and to the video images on the large
plasma screens which sit on top of the kiosks.
And we don’t have to spend a dime to bring them there. We’ve
found that it’s a model that works well for the Internet.”
CEOCFOinterviews - How do you attract people to your Internet
portals?
Mr.El-Batrawi - “For one thing our kiosks are very large.
In addition, there are usually clusters of six stations, or more,
in each mall and a huge plasma screen on
top of the kiosk, which helps to drive people to the system.
Nobody can miss it. There
are many functions, which allow people to spend directly on sales, print
coupons, do searches on the Internet, and even send email from the kiosk,
with a snapshot of themselves taken right at the kiosk.
CEOCFOinterviews - What kind of arrangement do you have with the
malls?
Mr.El-Batrawi -‘We usually do deals with the owners of the malls
where we are staying for a minimal rent and percentage of the
revenue.”
CEOCFOinterviews -How do you make your money?
Mr.El-Batrawi - “We sell advertising over the Centerlinq
network. We also do some e-commerce transactions, but bulk of the revenue
comes from advertising.”
CEOCFOinterviews - Who are some of the companies that advertise?
Mr.El-Batrawi - “Companies such as Sega, Paramount, Nike are some
of our larger advertisers. We have grown to the size where national
advertisers are taking a look closer at us.”
CEOCFOinterviews - What states are you in?
Mr.Batrawi - “We are in a lot of states. We are in seventeen of
top twenty markets right now, so we are everywhere from California to
New York, and other large markets such as Texas, Chicago and Florida.”
CEOCFOinterviews - What is the growth potential for your Internet
portals?
Mr.El-Batrawi - “There are 37 malls and stalls at this time and
we are growing. We have contracts with up to 200 malls.”
CEOCFOinterviews -How long will it take to reach this target?
Mr.El-Batrawi - “We should reach that within the next two
years.”
CEOCFOinterviews -Is there any competition in this market?
Mr.El-Batrawi - “There were six other companies that did what we
do, but they have all dwindled. There
is only one other left, and in terms of functionality we are definitely leaders in
this field. We have exclusive
contracts with a large number of mall developers and we feel have captured
this market.”
CEOCFOinterviews - Do you have the cash and/or credit to continue
your growth?
Mr.El-Batrawi - “We are doing fine. We should probably end up
with profitability by the end of the fourth quarter of this year.”
CEOCFOinterviews - Are you exploring any future acquisitions?
Mr.El-Batrawi – “Yes. We are constantly looking at acquisitions
that make sense.”
CEOCFOinterviews - Is there a final thought that you would like to
leave with your current shareholders and potential investor?
Mr.El-Batrawi - “We are a company that is growing fast. We have a
very intelligent and aggressive management team, and even though our stock
price has risen steadily, I think that we are still undervalued.
