What are the biggest challenges facing online retailers today?
Green: First of all the pure play online retailers are more and more being challenged by the brick-and-mortar companies getting into e-tailing. Some brick-and-mortar chains have done this very successfully. Neiman Marcus, for example, has a very successful combination of brick and mortar and e-tail operations. Another challenge is security. Security is paramount and it seems no matter how much companies spend on security, there are still people who can figure out how to get around it. The last thing in the world any e-tailer or any consumer wants is to have a security problem. Sun Microsystems has a military grade security system that has never been hacked. Without something like that, it’s going to be extremely difficult to keep consumer confidence up and make sure that they continue to buy online.
