September 22, 1999

Click Here for a Few Well-Chosen Words

By SHEILA McDONALD

UBLIN -- The Irish have long been known for their gift of gab, so perhaps it is not surprising that one of the E-commerce pioneers here is a one-woman shop that offers a few suitable words on any subject for any occasion for anyone, anywhere in the world.

	To Niamh Crowe, a party's a party, whether it's a bar mitzvah or an Australian bush ceremony.

At Speechwriters (http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/09/biztech/technology/#1), revenue has grown steadily since 1994, when the company began selling wedding speeches online. Niamh (pronounced neeve) Crowe runs her company with little overhead, and the Internet consulting business run by her husband, Fred, designs and operates the Web site for free.

Once customers reach the Speechwriters site, they can type in details of the occasion, pay $150 and receive a customized speech within seven days. Or they can pay $25 for a set of prewritten speeches that can be mixed and matched. In May, the company installed a system that sends the speech by e-mail as soon as the customer's credit card is approved. Revenues have increased 50 percent since the automated system began and have topped $6,500 a month. Today, the company has more than 80 offerings, ranging from poems to speeches, for occasions as varied as bar mitzvahs and funerals.

Introduction • A Feeding Frenzy for Consumers Forum • Join a Discussion on E-Commerce Marketing Strategies • Digital Dressing Rooms • Converting E-Mail Spam • Direct Marketers Find Their Ground • To Sell Globally or Sell Haughtily? • Straining to Build Customer Service • What Sex Sites Teach Home Shopping • Present at the Creation • Quick Purchase. Slow Delivery. • Living for a Week Online Time Is Money • Fast and Faster Connections • Speed It Up, Webmaster! • Drugstores in Digital Scramble Entrepreneurship • Goliath.com Still Winning • An Early Success in Germany • A Perky Do-It-Yourself Site • A Beginner Learns • On Campus: Crescendo in E-Major Auctions • Four Tales From an Hour of Ebay • There Are 30 Seconds Left... • A World of Auction Choices Leisure • A Food Site for Every Appetite • Blackjack Is a Click Away • Many Limited Travel Sites Caveat Emptor • Take My Name Please! • An Online Credit Check • Auction Scams and Identity Thefts Business to Business • Web Retailers Need Shelf Space • A Supplier Goes Digital • IBM Moves to Web Business The Law • Can Defendants Cry 'E-Sanctuary' • Blackjack in a Legal Gray Area • A Simpler Web Sales Tax Algorithms • Just What Does Doubleclick Do? • Telling You What You Like • Shuffling Data Cards Who's Buying • Target for Retailers: Teen-Agers •  Tough and Impatient Consumers • The Price of Being Off-Line Personal Favorites • Adam Clayton Powell 3d • Diane Von Furstenberg • Carter Brey • Amar Goel • Glenn Lowry • Jim McDermott • Judy McGrath • Naomi Nari Nam • Steven Pinker

Mrs. Crowe doesn't mind writing about occasions she has never experienced: her favorite assignment came from an Australian man who wanted a poem to read at a bush fire. She says that research skills developed when she was a journalist -- and a healthy empathy for people -- make her job easy. "When I'm writing, generally it's a celebration, and we all celebrate the same," she said. "The food might be different and the format might be different, but people are still feeling the same warmth."

Over all, Ireland has moved slowly into E-commerce. It is burdened with plodding Internet service and high phone costs. Big business here has been slow to embrace the Web. Most companies have been satisfied with brochure-style sites, and business-to-business E-commerce is rare.

But there are signs of change. Last year, Government ministers broke the national telephone monopoly, and new legislation should make electronically signed documents as binding as the written word. By accelerating its E-commerce plans, the Irish Government hopes to gain a key edge over longtime rival Scotland. For nearly a decade, the Celtic cousins have competed head to head for high-technology projects ranging from call centers to hardware manufacturing.

Both countries offer well-educated, English-speaking work forces and membership in the European Union, although the Irish authorities like to point to Ireland's stronger foreign language skills and to a generous incentive scheme that offers corporations a low tax rate of 10 percent until 2005.

Several important Internet businesses have recently chosen Ireland as their European base, including companies not aimed at the Irish market.

Enba, a holding company based in Dublin that was started in February, plans to offer Internet financial services to Europe. The company, which says it is Europe's largest-ever venture capital start-up, is to introduce an Internet banking product in Britain next week.

Last autumn, the Internet advertising network Doubleclick chose Dublin as headquarters for its international operations, citing benefits like the multilingual work force and tax incentives. The 25-person office now handles all sales and administration for Doubleclick campaigns worldwide, excluding the United States. And University College Dublin announced this month the creation of what it called Europe's first chair devoted to electronic commerce.

Even as big-money Internet players begin to converge on Ireland, some analysts say the country's best bet for embracing the Internet could lie with small, home-grown companies like Mrs. Crowe's. According to Amarach, a local Web research firm, such companies fuse traditional Irish creative talents with Web technologies to do business worldwide, although they're based in Ireland. Amarach has dubbed the scenario "Enyanomics," after the Irish vocalist who has sold millions of albums worldwide, all without a single performance in person.