Onsale Adopts ESD

Onsale's deal with Digital River Inc., an online provider of digital products, underscores once again how online resellers can make software available effectively and cheaply. And with ESD, online prices will get even lower, says Desbele Gebre, software merchandising director for Onsale. ESD will always result in a "better price than a shrink-wrapped package," he says.

Though Onsale began delivering products electronically on July 9, sales didn't take off until it sent a promotional e-mail to 200,000 customers on Sunday. ESD sales grew by 150 percent by Monday, says Gebre. He declined to give specific sales figures. Onsale publicly revealed its ESD capability today.

Onsale is enticing customers by sweetening ESD deals that already were good. For example, it's offering McAfee.com Corp.'s VirusScan Classic 4.03 for Windows 95 and 98 for $12.95 (after a $20 rebate). That easily beats McAfee's own online ESD price of $49.95.

Asked whether such low prices for ESD products will further undercut VARs, Gebre says most products delivered electronically are small programs of about 20 Mb for personal use such as VirusScan. So VARs shouldn't be adversely affected, he says.

Distributors such as Ingram Micro Inc. and Tech Data Corp. are offering their channel partners the technology to compete with online resellers. Some integrators already sell and deliver applications electronically on their own.

Matrix Logic Corp., a $3 million Novato, Calif., boutique integrator of knowledge and document management software, sells custom add-on programs to PC Docs' Fulcrum application, says Lesley Baird, business development vice president. "We actually prefer [ESD]. It means we don't have to keep inventory."