StartUp Beat

Web Site: www.prismastar.com

Headquarters: Chicago

Year Founded: 2005

Founders: Joshua Z. Tabin, CEO

Employees: 30

By Joshua Z. Tabin

PrismaStar has developed a patented product search tool that helps shoppers find the best products and services.  It is designed for use on the web, in kiosks or from mobile phones.  Founded in Prague, Czech Republic, in January 2005, PrismaStar has recently opened offices in London and Chicago.  The company is growing quickly, and currently employs thirty staff.

Our vision is simple: To be the leading provider of e-commerce and consumer guidance technology.  Consumers have been neglected far too long.  PrismaStar is here to change that by creating the most comprehensive and unbiased tools available for making purchase decisions.  By helping shoppers find and decide on the very best product for their individual needs, we give shoppers confidence to move forward with a purchase.  After all, we’re consumers too. Our goal is to make shopping fun again!

AnswerOil

PrismaStar’s product selection engine, AnswerOil (www.answeroil.com), uses patented interdependent slider technology to help consumers make better, faster, decisions.  AnswerOil revolutionizes the online and in-store kiosk shopping experience by focusing on what and why consumers buy.  Shoppers can search for any product feature or specification and trade-off the importance of different features; fine-tuning their search, and sorting and ranking relevant results in real-time.  Because every shopper’s needs and priorities are different, our technologies are designed to allow each shopper to choose what they are searching for rather than have it dictated by the retailer.  We put the shopper in control of their search.

The AnswerOil user interface allows fast, easy comparison of multiple products based on any and all specifications.  As shoppers tweak their search, the results dynamically sort in real-time.  For retailers, AnswerOil brings higher sales conversion rates, higher customer satisfaction, fewer product returns, more repeat business and, ultimately, higher revenues.

Happy Customers

Jessops

In July 2008, PrismaStar signed Jessops, the UK’s largest photography retailer.  The cornerstone of Jessops’ success has been its exceptionally high standard of customer service.  PrismaStar has brought this standard to an even higher level since implementing AnswerOil for the Jessops web site (www.jessops.com).

123Shop

AnswerOil was implemented at 123Shop, a camera retailer in the Czech Republic (www.fotoplaneta.cz).  This resulted in a two-fold increase in their sales conversion rates.

“The ratio of visits to orders placed has doubled and user feedback is also assuring us that we hit the mark,” says Pavel Včíslo, Director of Sales, 123shop.cz.  “Potential customers going through the decision-making process were frustrated by the difficulty of finding relevant and accurate product information.  The AnswerOil Product Selection Engine is our response to this problem.  The system makes it significantly faster and easier for a shopper to find and choose the best camera for them.”

Award Winner

PrismaStar was awarded the first-place 2007 Internet Effectiveness Award by Economia Online, a leading Czech business publication, for its implementation of AnswerOil in 2007 on a Czech and Slovak hotel search site at www.hotelselector.cz.

Mology

We are very excited about the imminent launch of Mology, a social networking site for online consumer electronics shopping (www.mology.com) powered by AnswerOil.  The site currently features just a camera selector, but other product categories will be added soon, followed by a unique feature that will allow users of Mology to create their own personalized selectors to use AnswerOil to help them make virtually any decision.

More functionality will be added to the site to make Mology the place where Techthusiasts go to discuss, rate and buy consumer electronics online.

Business Model

By licensing our patented AnswerOil technology, PrismaStar provides retailers with a solution that quickly and easily identifies what consumers want, increasing the likelihood of making a purchase.  Retailers pay a monthly licensing fee and we take care of everything else.

DataOil is part of the back-end of AnswerOil and is a proprietary system that gathers, integrates, and validates highly detailed and accurate product specification data, which is also available for purchase.  Another component of the technology is Real-time Performance Metrics (RPM), which stores and analyzes every purchase made via the AnswerOil selection engine.  The result is unique, unsurpassed market research data—captured in the natural act of shopping—that tells our customers WHY shoppers are purchasing their products.  This data will also be sold in the future.

Finally, Mology generates revenue via a variety of affiliate programs and by bringing the power of AnswerOil to the world.

The Brains

I began my career in 1982 as a computer programmer on the CDC Cyber/PLATO mainframe at the Computer Education Research Laboratory of the University of Illinois.  In 1986, I worked for SuperValu Corporation as a programmer working on Burroughs (Unisys) mainframe computers and PC-based database systems.  In 1990, I transitioned into the field of Corporate Sales and Management for ComputerLand.  In 1993, I moved to Chicago to work for Elek-Tek, where I leveraged relationships with large companies such as Case Tractor, GE, Philips and Tribune to build a sales team whose annual revenue reached $30 million in just two years.  In 1996 I started Tabin Corporation (www.tabin.com) and by 1999 it was the 83rd fastest-growing company in the United States (according to Dun & Bradstreet).

In 2000, I was awarded the Chicago-Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame Award.  By mid-2001, Tabin Corporation’s monthly revenue grew to nearly $4 million per month from offices in Chicago, Dallas, Texas, and Seattle, Washington.  Sales growth of 4,250 percent for the five years from 1997 ($600,000) to 2001 ($26.1 million) would have placed Tabin Corporation number 26 on the Inc. 500 had it not been sold to California-based EnPointe Technologies in October 2002.

My energy comes from collaborating with my staff—a multi-cultural collective of inspired young technology enthusiasts, whose creative spark is constantly turning ideas into reality, thereby making a positive difference in people’s lives, in ways they did not previously think possible!

PrismaStar – www.prismastar.com and www.answeroil.com