Dan Wagner has packed a lot into his 41 years. He set up his first business at 20; became the youngest chief executive on the stock market at 30; and three years later pulled off a £260m acquisition to turn Maid into the largest online information company in the world. Providing access to tens of thousands of published sources, Maid was an obvious partner for Microsoft when it launched its MSN Internet site.
Yet despite his occasional successes, Wagner has always struggled to be taken seriously, let alone be recognised as an Internet pioneer. Thanks to Maid’s botched flotation, his talent for controversy, and too many missed forecasts and deadlines in the City, Wagner was often a laughing stock.
When Maid changed its name to Dialog, it was routinely referred to as Dial-a-dog. As investor interest in Internet companies finally took off in the late 1990s, Wagner’s business – and its shares – were weighed down by debt and constant refinancing worries. “I got myself into a real pickle,” he admitted last week.
Four years ago Wagner walked away from the City, having failed to persuade the board of his struggling company to continue backing his cherished e-commerce project. It was 2001, dotcom had turned to dotbomb, and the board’s view was: “Nobody is interested in e-commerce and we can’t continue to fund it.”
Today, that fledgling e-commerce business, which Wagner took private for a pittance, has evolved into Venda, which supplies the software that runs online shops for many prominent companies. The list includes technologically savvy organisations such as BT, the BBC, Xerox and Panasonic, as well as retailers like Mothercare, Focus DIY, Ted Baker and Virgin Megastores.
Flushed with this evidence of success, Wagner is allowing himself to dream big dreams again. “This is a major business, which will be much bigger that Maid, much bigger,” he said. “This is a multi-billion-pound company in the making.”
The backdrop is the booming growth in online sales. Visa International, the credit-card group, has estimated that $150 billion (£82 million) of goods and services were bought over the Internet last year, a 56% rise on 2003. This is set to expand much further as the spread of broadband makes it possible to buy a wider range of services more quickly and efficiently.
At his offices in London’s Soho Square, Wagner claimed that Venda is ideally placed to benefit because it can supply highly customisable online shops for a relatively modest £4,000 a month. It offers to get new clients trading online in only 8 or 10 weeks.
Wagner said that Venda’s e-tailing software was “a Lego kit of thousands of components” – carefully designed so that they can be assembled in endless permutations, according to the customer’s wishes.
In Venda’s case, the “bricks” include features such as customer reviews, product-comparison tools, an email facility to “recommend to a friend”, as well as essentials such as a shopping cart for processing orders.
Wagner is now looking to broaden Venda’s appeal still further by bringing in Royal Mail and Christian Salvesen, the logistics company, in a venture to be announced this week.
Together, the three companies will be able to offer a complete, off-the-shelf e-tailing package. Venda will supply the online trading system, Salvesen’s warehouses will take care of the fulfilment of orders and Royal Mail will deliver goods to consumers’ doorsteps.
Adam Crozier, Royal Mail’s chief executive, said he saw much of his company’s growth coming from “the home and mobile shopping revolution that is changing the face of consumer behaviour”.
Part of Wagner’s opportunity comes from his past troubles. Venda can afford to charge its customers £48,000 a year and still expect to make a profit in year two. “If I had not had to take it private in distressed circumstances, I’d have had to charge a lot more,” he said.
Dialog spent about £20m on its e-tailing project before offloading it to Wagner. He also acquired the assets of boo.com, which spent a similar sum on some impressive order fulfilment and tracking technology before it went spectacularly bust. He has spent a further £4.5m finishing the development work.
Wagner and his family still own about 60% of Venda. Although Venda is “racing away without any need for external capital”. Wagner said that he might one day float the business.
But he has no intention of returning to running a public company: “I shoot for the stars, and I may hit the moon. If you’re a public company, you shoot the barn and you must hit the barn.”