DISKY BUSINESS: COMPANIES CD BUSINESS CARDS SAY MORE

PHOENIX (September 28, 2000) -- It used to be revolutionary to put your Web address on your business card. Now, you can have your whole Web site on one. Just as e-mail has become as essential as company letterhead, more companies are opting for CD versions of their business cards alongside the paper ones.

The high-tech business cards can hold video, audio, animation or just plain text, as well as links to the company's Web site. Or, if the company prefers, the high-tech cards can serve as portable Web sites themselves.

The CD's are about the size of a credit card and fit into a computers CD-ROM drive. Some have rounded sides in order to store more information and fit better in the drives, but others can be rectangular and almost identical in size to a paper business card or credit card. As paper cards hold only text, a CD version with 50 megabytes of memory can support about five minutes of video, about 50 minutes of CD-quality music or 1,500 pages of text, according to BIZCARDS ON CD, a division of the Phoenix company Vertigo Interactive Design, Inc. The company sells them for as low as $.80 cents each in orders of 5,000 to 10,000 and $2.00-$3.00 a piece for small orders, typically no fewer than 150.

"Someone is going to take a business card on CD and pass it along to someone else," Vertigo's Karen Looney says. "That's the benefit of having a CD-ROM rather than a piece of paper or brochure. A piece of paper doesn't talk to you."

There is also the practical side of using a business card on CD. Instead of using thousands of sheets of paper, a company can put its annual report on the CD and still have room for a message from the CEO. Marketing departments can put their media kits on CD's. Job hunters can use them for a portfolio. Peter Ashworth, CEO of Avomedia Corp. in Scottsdale, Arizona even suggested a cross-marketing scenario where a clothing company could include with each pair of jeans it sells a CD that shows off its new fall line.

Phoenix resident Jim Buckley, who works for the Sarasota, Florida based Leap Inc. venture capital firm, says he uses the CD's for presentations. He says the CD's are common in the East and are starting to catch on in this part of the country. "It gives you the ability to put a lot of information on a tiny card that people can carry around with them," Leap says. Avomedia's Ashworth says "The CD business card industry is only about 2 years old, but it's growing rapidly."

Like Vertigo Interactive Design, Inc., Avomedia Corp. does its graphics and Web design in house. Others, such as BCD Technologies in Gilbert, Arizona produce the CD's themselves but partner with other companies to do the multimedia work.

Because the price per CD goes down with orders of 5,000 or more, large companies typically place bulk orders, passing out the cards at trade shows or exhibitions. Individuals usually keep their orders in the hundreds. Of course, that cost just covers manufacturing the cards. There's also the question of what to put on them. The more sophisticated the work, the more you will pay. "It's a cutting-edge thing still," says Dante Fierros, president of BCD Technologies. "When I pass out the cards at networking functions, the majority of people are still in awe of it."