Scene7

Last updated
Adobe Scene7
Company typeSubsidiary
Industry computer software
Founded San Rafael, California (1990s)
Headquarters San Francisco, California
Parent Adobe Systems
Website scene7.com

Scene7 is an American on-demand rich media software company that provides document hosting and interactive publishing services such as online catalogs, targeted email, video, and image management. Retailers use the company's services to showcase products on their websites and to allow customers to interact with the products. Scene7's technology allows users to manipulate product images by zooming in and rotating products, simulating the inspection of merchandise in retail stores.

Contents

The company, founded as a division of Autodesk, created a room decoration computer software called Picture This Home in the mid-1990s. The division was sold to Broderbund in 1998, then spun off as a company called GoodHome.com in June 1999. After GoodHome.com failed to become profitable, it was reorganized and renamed Scene7. It formally launched on January 23, 2001, and focused on helping companies prepare interactive advertisements for consumers. Adobe Systems acquired Scene7 in 2007 for an undisclosed sum. [1]

Company

A subsidiary of Adobe Systems, Scene7 provides document hosting and interactive publishing services, [2] typically charging clients to convert catalog print files to interactive web pages. The company does most of its business in North America. Scene7 products rely on several Adobe products, including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Flash, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Flex; this relationship existed before Adobe purchased the company. [3] Scene7 does not maintain any servers to host its services; instead, it uses a "pay as you grow" program that only requires it to pay for the resources that it uses. [4]

Harrods flagship store in London, England. Scene7 allows visitors to Harrods' website to interact with product images. HarrodsDay.jpg
Harrods flagship store in London, England. Scene7 allows visitors to Harrods' website to interact with product images.

History

GoodHome.com (1995−2000)

Mattel's headquarters in El Segundo, California. The company owned Scene7 for a year before spinning it off as GoodHome.com. Mattelheadquarters.jpg
Mattel's headquarters in El Segundo, California. The company owned Scene7 for a year before spinning it off as GoodHome.com.

The company began as a development team that created software called Picture This Home in the mid-1990s for Autodesk in San Rafael, California. [5] The program allowed people to virtually preview room decoration projects before any work began. Its users can create virtual rooms, change walls and arrange furniture, and create photo-realistic renderings of completed designs. Picture This Home was awarded the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. [6] In 1998, the software and its team of 40 developers were sold to Broderbund, which was owned by The Learning Company, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Broderbund eventually spun Picture This Home off as a company called GoodHome.com in June 1999 with Doug Mack as its CEO. The company received $30 million in venture capital from Hearst Interactive Media. [5]

Mack noted that before Broderbund spun off GoodHome.com as a separate company, there was a "big culture clash" between the established company and the new media division. [7] He said that companies such as Broderbund were so concerned with established business that smaller, newer divisions found it hard to receive sufficient attention and bandwidth. He praised Broderbund's decision to spin the company off as a separate entity: "We would have never been able to build our Web business if we were not in a separate building with separate funding." [7] Mack observed that newer companies like GoodHome.com rarely had any problem in hiring new employees because of the opportunity for Internet companies to grow quickly into "the next Amazon.com". [7]

In September 1999, GoodHome.com merged with Alexandria, Virginia-based nHabit.com, a rival company, for an undisclosed sum. [8] After the merger, GoodHome.com was assured that it would grow quickly; the merger also added the Internet service provider America Online to GoodHome.com's portfolio as a client. [9] Ten weeks after forming a business plan, GoodHome.com officially launched on September 29, 1999 [10] with offices in San Rafael and New York City, New York, [11] and Roger Horchow was assigned as its chairman. [8] The company used the slogan "A beautiful home. It was never this easy," [12] and focused on selling furniture and other home items, [5] spending $20 million on advertisements in its first year. [11] Mack decided that the company should target women, [12] since "women make 80 percent of decorating decisions." [11] The company built a home furnishings portal to compete with the websites Living.com and Furniture.com, which both went bankrupt in 2000. [5] In April 2000, GoodHome.com's monthly sales topped $1 million; the company's goal was to be profitable within two to three years. [13]

One of the website's biggest attractions was its virtual decorating service that let customers see how certain features such as the paint, upholstery fabric, rugs, and pillows would look before a purchase. When considering why this service was so popular, Mack noted that consumers usually feel more confident in a purchase when there are few unknowns. At the time, selling products over the Internet was not a popular concept outside the United States, but Mack was confident in expanding GoodHome.com's portfolio to include foreign companies: "We're already getting so many requests from companies about expanding our website abroad... I see this happening quickly within the next few years." [9]

GoodHome.com encountered difficulties in running its business in 2000, when several other companies that offered similar services launched. The increasing demand for online catalog services, considered a phenomenon, was dubbed the "hottest thing since sliced bread" by an analyst from technology research firm Forrester Research, which estimated that roughly $500 million was invested in home furnishing websites from 1999 to 2000. [14] It became difficult for consumers to decide which service provided better quality; a business owner commented, "You can't tell the difference in quality between something that's $3,000 and something that's $10,000." [14] GoodHome.com, which had offered free shipping, phased out the feature on July 15, 2000, in favor of "heavily subsidized rates". [14] To compete with new companies, GoodHome.com also introduced new features such as a "floor planning" feature to allow website visitors build an electronic version of their rooms, then drag in furnishings to see how they fit. [14]

Hearst Corporation, based in New York City, provided two rounds of funding for Scene7: $30 million in 1999, and $15 million in 2001. Hearstowernyc.JPG
Hearst Corporation, based in New York City, provided two rounds of funding for Scene7: $30 million in 1999, and $15 million in 2001.

Reorganization (2001−2007)

After spending several years operating at a loss, GoodHome.com reorganized as Scene7, which formally launched on January 23, 2001, with $15 million raised from investors that included Hearst Interactive Media. The new company focused on helping companies prepare interactive advertisements for consumers. [15] Mack, the Broderbund executive who had decided to spin off the company, reflected on the decision to reorganize and relaunch: "We got a year into [the initial GoodHome scheme] and the whole B2C (business-to-consumer) market tanked, and we realized we could not build a successful business as a portal [...] But the whole time we kept having people approach us to license the technology [to create virtual catalogs], and finally a light bulb went off when we realized we were sitting on top of a great technology we could sell." [5] Scene7 raised a round of financing on July 12, 2001, that totaled $11.3 million, which helped stabilize the company. The deal was led by venture capitalists from several firms, including Louis Bacon's Moore Capital Management and Xcelera of the Cayman Islands, with cash investments from Cooley Godward and Perkins Coie. [5] After the latest round of financing, Mack planned for Scene7 to have 15 clients and a burn rate, or negative cash flow, of less than $700,000 a month, stating, "What we learned was to stick to your strategy, and don't get nervous when the competition is adopting a strategy to spend their way to victory." [16] At the time, the company's revenues were well below its peak of $1 million a month, but Mack intended to increase revenues past that point in a few months. [16]

Scene7 moved from San Rafael to Hamilton Landing in Novato, California in September 2002 to accommodate more employees. [17] On July 9, 2003, the company acquired all of the assets of workflow provider and advertising software company Engage for $1.2 million and assumed its $650,000 debt after Engage filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. [18] Engage was the parent company of both Cascade and MidSystems, which were two of the first companies that tried to automate prepress production for newspapers and large printers. [19] On August 15, 2003, Scene7 acquired its top competitor, TrueSpectra of San Mateo, for an undisclosed amount of cash and stock. [17] On June 15, 2004, Scene7 raised $7.5 million in another round of financing, led by home shopping company QVC with some of Scene7's existing investors. At the same time, Jeffrey Branman, President of Interactive Technology Partners at QVC, and David Rubenstein, co-founder of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, joined Scene7's board of directors, which was composed of James Caccavo of Moore Capital, Andrew Wright of RealNetworks, and Mack. [20]

Since the early 2000s, the company's growth has been fueled by an increase in broadband Internet access, which loads virtual catalogs faster than dial-up Internet access. When catalogs first appeared online in the late 1990s, the graphics took too long to load. After high-speed Internet access became more popular, virtual catalogs quickly grew to become a popular feature of online stores. [21] In addition to faster Internet connectivity, a study in 2000 noted that an online presence for brick and mortar businesses increased offline sales by an average of 27%. Mack also pointed out that having more product information disseminated helps play a role in increasing sales: "We have the ability to provide consistent information... One of the advantages of selling furniture online is the hyperscript; you always have the original specifications on a product." [9]

Subsidiary of Adobe (2007)

Adobe Systems, based in San Jose, California, acquired Scene7 to help boost its overall services strategy. Adobe HQ.jpg
Adobe Systems, based in San Jose, California, acquired Scene7 to help boost its overall services strategy.

Scene7 was acquired by Adobe Systems on May 31, 2007, for an undisclosed sum. At that time, Scene7 had 80 employees, most of whom were transferred from Scene7's former headquarters in Novato, California [3] to Adobe's offices in San Francisco, California. [22] Mack joined Adobe as its vice president of Creative Solutions Services. Scene7 was added to Adobe's product line as a hosted service to help boost Adobe's overall services strategy, [2] especially its software as a service efforts, [3] and because Scene7 was a great fit due to its heavy usage of Adobe products. [2]

The Scene7 brand will continue to be used, but it will "eventually be replaced with the Adobe brand". [3] Denmark-based YaWah, a dynamic imaging software company, was acquired by Adobe on September 26, 2008, to help expand Scene7 globally. [23]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TiVo Corporation</span> American technology company (1983–2020)

TiVo Corporation, formerly known as the Rovi Corporation and Macrovision Solutions Corporation, was an American technology company headquartered in San Jose, California. Now operating as Xperi, the company is primarily involved in licensing its intellectual property within the consumer electronics industry, including digital rights management, electronic program guide software, and metadata. The company holds over 6,000 pending and registered patents. The company also provides analytics and recommendation platforms for the video industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CompuServe</span> 1969–2009 American online service provider

CompuServe, Inc. was an American Internet company that provided an eponymous online service, the first major commercial one in the world. It opened in 1969 as a timesharing and remote access service marketed to corporations. After a successful 1979 venture selling otherwise under-utilized after-hours time to Radio Shack customers, the system was opened to the public, roughly the same time as The Source.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Broderbund</span> American software company

Broderbund Software, Inc. was an American maker of video games, educational software, and productivity tools. Broderbund is best known for the 8-bit video game hits Choplifter, Lode Runner, Karateka, and Prince of Persia, as well as The Print Shop—originally for printing signs and banners on dot matrix printers—and the Myst and Carmen Sandiego games. The company was founded in Eugene, Oregon, and moved to San Rafael, California, then later to Novato, California. Broderbund was purchased by SoftKey in 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">QVC</span> American television network

QVC is an American free-to-air television network and a flagship shopping channel specializing in televised home shopping, owned by Qurate Retail Group. Founded in 1986 by Joseph Segel in West Chester, Pennsylvania, United States, QVC broadcasts to more than 350 million households in seven countries, including channels in the UK, Germany, Japan, and Italy, along with a joint venture in China with China National Radio called CNR Mall.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HSN</span> American home shopping television network

HSN, Inc. an initialism of its former name Home Shopping Network, is an American free-to-air television network owned by the Qurate Retail Group, which also owns catalog company Cornerstone Brands. It is based in the Gateway area of St. Petersburg, Florida, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boo.com</span> British eCommerce business

Boo.com was a short-lived British eCommerce business, founded in 1998 by Swedes Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander and Patrik Hedelin, who were regarded as sophisticated Internet entrepreneurs in Europe by the investors because they had created an online bookstore named Bokus.com, the third largest book e-retailer, before founding boo.com.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Online shopping</span> Form of electronic commerce

Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the retailer directly or by searching among alternative vendors using a shopping search engine, which displays the same product's availability and pricing at different e-retailers. As of 2020, customers can shop online using a range of different computers and devices, including desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers and smartphones.

<i>Living Books</i> Interactive storybook series

Living Books is a series of interactive read-along adventures aimed at children aged 3–9. Created by Mark Schlichting, the series was mostly developed by Living Books for CD-ROM and published by Broderbund for Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. Two decades after the original release, the series was re-released by Wanderful Interactive Storybooks for iOS and Android.

SoftKey International was a software company founded by Kevin O'Leary in 1986 in Toronto, Ontario. It was known as The Learning Company from 1995 to 1999 after acquiring The Learning Company and taking its name.

Ubique was a software company based in Israel. Founded in 1994, Ubique is notable for launching the first social-networking software, which included features such as instant messaging, voice over IP (VoIP), chat rooms, web-based events, and collaborative browsing. The company is best known for its most prominent product, Virtual Places, a presence-based chat program that allowed users to explore websites together. This software required both server and client components, enabling users to overlay avatars onto their web browsers and collaborate in real-time as they visited websites. Virtual Places was utilized by providers such as VPChat and Digital Space and eventually evolved into Lotus Sametime. Despite advancements and changes, some consumer-oriented communities still use older versions of Virtual Places.

beenz.com Defunct website

beenz.com was a website that allowed consumers to earn beenz, a type of online currency, for performing activities such as visiting a web site, shopping online, or logging on through an Internet service provider. The beenz e-currency could then be spent with participating online merchants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disney Interactive</span> Interactive subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company

Disney Interactive is an American video game and internet company that oversees various websites and interactive media owned by The Walt Disney Company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital Insight</span>

Digital Insight was a provider of online banking software to banks and credit unions. It also designed FinanceWorks, a product that allowed customers to manage their finances. In 2014, the company was acquired by and folded into NCR Corporation.

Foster & Smith, Inc. was an American mail order and e-commerce pet supply corporation based in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. The company funds PetEducation.com, a "resource for any pet owner who is seeking information."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qurate Retail Group</span> American fashion holding company

Qurate Retail, Inc., also known as Qurate Retail Group, is an American media conglomerate controlled by company chairman John C. Malone, who owns a majority of the voting shares.

CommerceHub is one of the world’s commerce networks, providing software for drop shipping, marketplace, digital marketing, and delivery management. Generating over $50 billion in GMV annually, it provides integration and fulfillment services to both online and brick and mortar retailers, distributors, and supplier companies such The Home Depot, Nordstrom, Macy's, Lowe's, Adidas, Kohl’s, Nike, Costco, QVC, Staples, Best Buy, Meijer, drugstore.com, Walgreens, Dell, Toshiba, Sanyo, Minolta, Gateway and Little Tikes.

Mindspark Interactive Network, Inc. was an operating business unit of IAC known for the development and marketing of entertainment and personal computing software, as well as mobile application development. Mindspark's mobile division acquired iOS application developer Apalon in 2014, which was known for popular entertainment applications such as Weather Live, Emoji Keypad, and Calculator Pro.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adobe Creative Cloud</span> Software as a service offering from Adobe Inc.

Adobe Creative Cloud is a set of applications and services from Adobe that gives subscribers access to a collection of software used for graphic design, video editing, web development, photography, along with a set of mobile applications and also some optional cloud services. In Creative Cloud, a monthly or annual subscription service is delivered over the Internet. Software from Creative Cloud is downloaded from the Internet, installed directly on a local computer and used as long as the subscription remains valid. Online updates and multiple languages are included in the CC subscription. Creative Cloud was initially hosted on Amazon Web Services, but a new agreement with Microsoft has the software, beginning with the 2017 version, hosted on Microsoft Azure.

References

  1. ↑ jigar.patel@strategic-i.com (2007-05-04). "Adobe Systems Acquires Scene7 Real-Time Rich Media Delivery Service". Global Custodian. Retrieved 2024-12-10.
  2. 1 2 3 Taft, Darryl K. (2007-10-03). "Adobe Readies New Servers, Services, Tools". eWeek. Retrieved 2008-11-14.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Scene7 acquisition" (PDF). Adobe Systems. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-03-05. Retrieved 2008-10-27.
  4. ↑ "Adobe Scene7 implements Isilon IQ clustered storage". Telecomworldwire. 2008-08-04. Retrieved 2008-11-05.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Carlsen, Clifford (2001-07-12). "Scene7 ends winding journey with $11.3M round". Daily Deal.
  6. ↑ Szadkowski, Joe (1998-03-19). "'Picture This' program is chance to do it right". The Washington Times. p. E2.
  7. 1 2 3 Spirrison, Brad (1999-10-18). "Fortune 500 Companies Revise Internet Strategies". Web Finance.
  8. 1 2 Henry, Shannon (1999-09-30). "Lodging in a New Hotel Niche". The Washington Post. p. E01.
  9. 1 2 3 "Virtual gold rush". Cabinet Maker. January 7, 2000. p. 16.
  10. ↑ Stepanek, Marcia (1999-11-01). "How Fast Is Net Fast?". BusinessWeek. p. EB52.
  11. 1 2 3 Fromm, Emily (1999-09-06). "Goodhome Shops $ 20 Mil. Task". Adweek.
  12. 1 2 Cuneo, Alice Z. (1999-10-18). "Goodhome Taps Citron for $25 Mil Brand Acct". Advertising Age. p. 58.
  13. ↑ Ginsburg, Janet (2000-04-03). "Selling Sofas Online is no Snap". BusinessWeek. p. 96.
  14. 1 2 3 4 Iovine, Julie V. (2000-06-15). "Will Chairs Fly on the Web, or Just Fold?". The New York Times. p. F10.
  15. ↑ Hankin, Adrienne (2001-01-23). "Scene7 (TM), Inc., Formally Launches, Showcasing Full Suite of Interactive Imaging Technologies". PR Newswire . Retrieved 4 November 2008.
  16. 1 2 "Top Deal: VCs like GoodHome.com's new scene". Red Herring. 2001-07-17. Archived from the original on 2009-03-05. Retrieved 2008-12-21.
  17. 1 2 "Scene7 buys out largest rival firm". Marin Independent Journal. 2003-08-15.
  18. ↑ Collins, James (2003-06-20). "Former CMGI Unit Engage Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection". The Boston Globe. p. C1.
  19. ↑ Ward, Gareth (2003-07-03). "The workflow turned off". Printing World. p. 6.
  20. ↑ "QVC leads a $7.5 million financing for rich media provider Scene7". Internet Retailer. 2004-06-15. Retrieved 2008-12-03.
  21. ↑ Tedeschi, Bob (2004-06-15). "Fast access brings virtual catalogs back". The New York Times.
  22. ↑ "Scene7 Company Overview". BusinessWeek. Archived from the original on March 6, 2009. Retrieved 2008-11-13.
  23. ↑ "YaWah boost to Adobe's Scene7". Printweek. 2008-09-26. p. 14.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.