Contents
1. Is That Wirta Piloting a Soapbox?
2. E-brochure Format Alternatives

1. Is that Wirta Piloting a Soapbox? ... So I'm reading about Cisco System's plans to invest $1 billion in KPMG's global consulting arm (WSJ, August 9, 1999). I notice the last sentence quoting Rod McGeary, a vice chairman of KPMG consulting, saying that he hopes the new entity will become "more like a Silicon Valley firm than a Big Five firm." .... Hey, maybe that's what the property-services industry needs, too. After all, the five NYSE-listed firms in this sector (Grubb & Ellis, CB Richard Ellis, Insignia Financial Group, Jones Lang LaSalle and Trammell Crow) haven't dazzled the market lately.

Let's run with that thought. Check out "The Nudist on the Late Shift," Po Bronson's new chronicle of Silicon Valley. There's a picture of David Filo, a co-founder of Yahoo (and worth $550 million at the time), sleeping in his cubicle! ... So will we see Andy Farkas (CEO of Insignia) sleeping under his desk, Neal Young (CEO of G&E) playing Ultimate Frisbee or Ray Wirta (CEO of CB) piloting a soapbox derby vehicle in the Sand Hill Road races? (Note: For derby info, read "Silicon Valley Boys" by David Kaplan.) ... What do you think? Is your company adopting a Silicon Valley workstyle?

2. E-brochure Formats... What will replace paper marketing brochures? ... Gary Hutton at Majestic Realty, a developer of master-planned business/industrial based in City of Industry, CA posed that question recently. "What's best way for a company to distribute electronic brochures? Currently we provide HTML and PDF formats of our available properties on our web site. I was wondering what the industry is doing..." ... And, Paul Steffen at Starboard Commercial San Francisco wrote recently of his frustration when a national firm sent his office an e-mail brochure as a 2.2 MB file attachment (twice!).

One solution is to e-mail a link to your property posted at a listing web site... For example, check out Commercial Realty Online, a new listing service that is expanding nationally. Like other listing services, Comro enables you to search by property ID. Better yet, Comro enables you to e-mail a copy of a property web page. Cool. Of course, your recipient must be able to read HTML e-mail (with programs like Eudora, Netscape, Outlook -- not AOL!)... LoopNet also gives every listing an ID number. So you could e-mail that to a prospect for searching by ID... And COMPS.COM uses ID numbers, which you can see at the very end of the URL when you're looking at a property... Of course, if you're listing properties in a brochure format at your site (like Majestic already does) then you can easily put a link to that page at your own web site.

Question... What's your solution? How do you market your properties to potential tenants and buyers? ... Send e-mail to me , and I'll report more in a future Dispatch.

.--Peter