Value America

Value America
IndustryRetail
Founded1996; 28 years ago (1996) in Nevada
Founders
Defunct2000 (2000)
FateAssets sold to Merisel at bankruptcy
Headquarters
Charlottesville, Virginia
,
United States

Value America or VA was a dot-com company founded in Nevada in 1996[1] by Craig Winn and Rex Scatena,[2] and relocated to Charlottesville, Virginia in February 1998.[1] Its business model involved connecting customers on the Web directly to manufacturers, with the intent of providing better pricing and faster shipping (a just-in-time model similar to those used by Wal-Mart and Dell). Customers could order a wide range of products from VA's website, then VA would transmit the orders directly to the manufacturers, and the manufacturers would then package the products and ship them directly to the customer. Winn referred to this concept as "convergence commerce".[3] Value America was backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures and FedEx co-founder Frederick W. Smith.[4]

  1. ^ a b Perine, Keith (29 August 2000). "An American Dream Gone Bad". Computerworld.com.au. IDG Communications, Inc. Retrieved 21 December 2023.
  2. ^ News, Bloomberg (1999-12-30). "Company News; Value America Plans to Cut Nearly Half Its Work Force". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-07-28. {{cite news}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  3. ^ Bijlefeld, Marjolijn. "Crazy Craig's C-Commerce" Archived 2008-01-05 at the Wayback Machine, Virginia Business, January 2000. Retrieved September 10, 2007.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference news-wolverton was invoked but never defined (see the help page).