Wednesday, August 02 04:38 PM
Urban Cool Has Nothing To Crow About.
Representing the dirty south is urbancool.com. It is the first and only urban portal to make an aggressive run for the IPO market. It probably is the most expensive urban portal that no one knows about. They choose as a mascot "Bebe", a scruffy black crow with some beat up converse and blue eyes. An urban site based in Texas using "Jim Crowe" for promotions? Who runs this site? The company is run by Jacob R. Miles III, the former CEO of a company called Cultural Exchange Entertainment, which filed for bankruptcy protection and folded, less the a year before UNC is formed. The CFO, Barry M. Levine, is another veteran of a bankrupt company called Sports Heroes; it was a publicly traded sports memorabilia company, which went belly up. They even brought in an aristocrat with a title, Sir Brian Wolfson, who obviously recommended the Dukes of Hazzard to design the site. Launched in January of 1999, Urbancool has spent the majority of its time attempting to find ways of convincing Wall Street that its network of websites, based on 2nd tier affiliate relationships, is IPO worthy. Urbancool's revenue model seems to mostly involve over-paying companies like the Wilhelmina Artist Management agency, who received a 14% equity stake in UCN, for the privilege of building and maintaining their websites. In fact, Urbancool pays other companies that they link to. Urbancool's e-commerce strategy seems built around affiliate links to other e-tailers that any website can sign up for. If there is an affiliate program out there, Urbancool has signed up for it. Now that is business development. We wouldn't be surprised if their IP addresses are routed through cow udders. It's IPO, which has been postponed more times then a French kiss in an Indian movie, has languished along with the company, which suffers from a morass of poor design and a dysfunctional business plan. Urbancool's 8th adjustment to their IPO registration reduced the number of shares being offered from two million to 1.3 million and reduced the pricing by a dollar. The new date for the offering is still not set, but since UCN has no revenues and mounting losses, over $7 million to date, they need to generate some revenue. Perhaps, adding a Hi Bounce Ball dispenser to the NetStand kiosk that they are promoting. You can never have enough of those things. UrbanIQ and the Platnum Area on Soul Purpose had better watch out, here comes Urbantends (http://www.urbantrends.com). They ask for $20 and they don't even tell you what you are getting. The main site has articles that seem to be written by 5th graders. The aticles all end with "See Ya Later!" and "Bye!", which is basically your cue to break out from this site. See Ya Later Urbancool. Much later…

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