n109  2049  08 Jan 81
BC-COMPUCARD
(BizDay)
c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service
     STAMFORD, Conn. - If Walter A. Forbes is right, the future of
American retailing is taking shape on the fourth floor of a
nondescript office building in downtown Stamford.
    There, at the hub of an electronic shopping service offered by
Comp-U-Card of America Inc., teams of people man telephones and scan
price lists on computer terminals in a system that enables 1.5
million members to shop from home by toll-free telephone.
    ''We've put all our efforts into being the No. 1 electronic shopping
service for the 1980's, the 1990's and thereafter,'' said Forbes, the
chief executive. In addition to the 1.5 million members who shop by
phone, some 5,000 other home-computer owners with access to the
company's Comp-U-Star system have been able to shop with their
computer for the past 18 months. An expansion of Comp-U-Star and a
cable television shopping service are scheduled for the next few
months.
    Two major corporations have entered into agreements with Comp-U-Card
in recent months. Federated Department Stores of Cincinnati, the
diversified retailer that owns Bloomingdale's and Abraham and Straus,
purchased a minority interest of less than 10 percent in the company
in October.
    In early December, the Times-Mirror Satellite Programming Company, a
subsidiary of the Los Angeles-based communications company that owns
The Los Angeles Times newspaper, formed a joint venture with
Comp-U-Card for a televised home shopping service on cable. That is
scheduled to begin this spring.
    Comp-U-Card began operating in 1973, when Management Analysis Center
Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., consulting group, put up venture capital in
return for 45 percent ownership of an entrepreneur's nascent
electronic shopping service.
    The center bought the remaining interest in 1975, and the next year
Forbes, who had extended the original capital, left Management
Analysis and took over Comp-U-Card. His owner-partners include
William E. Simon, the former Secretary of the Treasury, and a member
of the Donnelley publishing family.
    While Comp-U-Card envisions itself as ''the dominant electronic
shopping company,'' until recently too few cable systems and personal
computer networks have existed to make that business significant. In
the meantime, Forbes said, ''We've been a research and development
compaoprimary result of
that effort is the telephone shopping service.
    Warner Amex, in cooperation with Compuserve, a Columbus, Ohio,
computer services company, announced earlier this week its own
electronic shopping service using in-home terminals. That service
will be offered to Warner's Columbus cable television subscribers.
And while there are other electronic and cable shopping services in
operation or being formed, Comp-U-Card appears to be the leading
company operating nationwide.
    Currently, Comp-U-Card's telephone shopping service is available to
individual members for $18 a year, while group membership costs about
half that much. Citibank sells a private branded version of the
service, Forbes said, and Gulf Oil and Atlantic Richfield have
promoted it to their credit card customers. In Connecticut, Hartford
Federal Savings offers the card as a premium for its NOW account
holders.
    Members gain access, by toll-free telephone lines, to Comp-U-Card's
computerized data bank. By presenting exact product specifications,
they can get price quotations, and delivery charges, on more than
30,000 items, Forbes said. The company deals only in current models,
which are offered at prices that generally represent savings of 20 to
40 percent, he said. Many users, however, use Comp-U-Card for
comparison shopping for products and prices at local stores.
    When it records a sale, Comp-U-Card receives a commission of 3 to 5
percent, Forbes said. Although he would not disclose sales figures,
he said the company received ''tens of thousands of phone calls a
month'' and that the annual sales volume nationwide ''is in the tens
of millions and is growing fast.'' But he added, ''We're just now
becoming profitable.''
    Having proved that this kind of buying service can work, Forbes said
it was now time to develop a service for the ''two emerging
electronic systems - home terminals and cable.''
    About 5,000 home computer users nationwide have for 18 months had
access to Comp-U-Star, which enables the computer operator to explore
an entire product category, such as video-cassette records, before
selecting the features and price of the model he wants.
    A more sophisticated version is now coming on line, he said.
Terminals will be installed thgukv mw  Casualty, and Travelers, which use the s-
ervice to
price replacement items covered by homeowners' policies, he said.
    When two-way cable television systems are in place, the same system
will be available to home viewers. But because most existing cable
systems travel only in one direction, from the broadcaster to the
home, Comp-U-Card is taking an interim step through its joint venture
with Times-Mirror.
    
nyt-01-08-81 2350est
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