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Going For The Summit

CANDICE CARPENTER has led some high-profile enterprises - Time Life Video and Television and the electronic retailing enterprise Q2 Inc. among them. But nothing, she says, has prepared her for the rocky terrain of online business better than her experience as a mountaineer. "In climbing, you have to make high-stakes decisions that affect a lot of people, and you have to act quickly or you're in trouble," Carpenter explains. "Managing an Internet firm is just like that."
Despite the challenge, under Carpenter's expert guidance, her company, iVillage -a network of online sites designed for women - has climbed well above the competition. With some two million visitors to its Web site each month, iVillage attracts more than twice as much traffic as its nearest competitor. "We've established a commanding lead," Carpenter reports proudly. "Our job now is to hang on to it."
Aiming for the "baby-boomer" audience, iVillage launched its first Web site, Parent Soup (www.parentsoup.com), in 1995. The popular site offers online visitors a combination of expert and peer advice on child rearing, as well as resources such as listings of family activities. Branching into other content areas, iVillage soon created sites such as About Work (www.aboutwork.com), Better Health (www.betterhealth.com), and Armchair Millionaire (www.armchairmillionaire.com), a financial planning site.
Although Carpenter and her cofounders originally targeted both male and female Internet users, they soon adjusted their strategy in response to the unexpected influx of women to the Web - an audience estimated to reach seventy million by the year 2000. "Women tend to browse less randomly than men, don't like to compartmentalize home, work, and family, and use the Web to solve problems," says Carpenter. In response, last November iVillage combined several of its content properties under a new umbrella destination, iVillage.com: The Women's Network (www.ivillage.com). The site offers women access to nine "channels" on topics such as careers, money, parenting, fitness, relationships, and working at home.
Dozens of blue-chip advertisers have flocked to the site; according to Carpenter, iVillage may be the only private content company with more than $1 million a month in revenue. Although the company is not yet operating in the black, she expects it to become profitable sometime in 1999. As with any media company, explains the former American Express marketing executive, an online firm "must delay profitability to build brand equity."
In other ways, however, doing business on the Web is unique. Like mountain climbing, Carpenter says, it's not for the faint of heart. "The speed at which companies are made or destroyed is incredible," she says. "If you don't like taking risks, you won't really like this sort of thing. The only reward is getting to the top. Being able to build value quickly is unbelievably exciting."
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