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E-commerce entrepreneur
SUN STAFF Mark Ribbing
Published on February 23, 1999
© 1999- The Baltimore Sun
Bruce R. Spector has helped build businesses in cable television
and radio. So, where does a late-1990s communications entrepreneur
like him look for a new opportunity?
Go ahead and guess. It starts with an "I" and ends
-- at least in theory -- with a big fat dollar sign. "Our
region is really a hotbed for Internet development,"
said Spector, who sold his acquisitive Baltimore-based radio
company, Benchmark Communications, in 1997 for $173 million.
"What Silicon Valley is to software, our region, I think,
is to Internet development."
Spector is trying to tap that Internet expertise through
the merger of two mid-Atlantic region Web design companies,
E.magination Network LLC of Baltimore and BSO Associates Inc.
of Washington. Spector is chairman of the new company, which
inherits the E.magination name.
The new company has headquarters at the American Can Co.
building in Canton and has 50 employees, about half of whom
are based in Maryland.
Spector said E.magination will give other companies the funding
and expertise to set up electronic commerce sites on the Web.
In return, E.magination gets a share of the client's electronic
commerce revenue. Spector said his new company has retail
clients, but he declined to identify them.
E.magination plans to start Web sites of its own, separate
from the sites it develops for clients.
Spector said his new company has no plans to go public.
Last year, E.magination came close to joining with another
Baltimore-based company, Gr8 Inc.. That deal fell through
because it called for E.magination founder Syd Rubin to leave
the company.
E.magination's employees objected to Rubin's departure, so
the deal was scrapped and Rubin stayed with E.magination.
He remains with the company as its president.
"It sort of had me rethinking everything," Rubin
said of the uncertainty surrounding the proposed Gr8 merger.
"It was like driving away and leaving my baby."
Pub Date: 2/23/99 Chairman: "Our region
is really a hotbed for Internet development," says E.magination
Chairman Bruce R. Spector, standing on his 28th-floor balcony
at the Gallery. BARBARA HADDOCK TAYLOR : SUN STAFF
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