Site Set For "how-to' Vids

NEW YORK‹A veteran home video entrepreneur is trying to raise $30 million-$50 million to launch an online service devoted to instructional media.
Joseph Meyersdorf expects to have his World Wide Web site, LearnAnything.com, up and running next spring along with a direct-response service that will give consumers access to the program catalog via a toll-free number. He plans to acquire product for 50%-60% off list, leaving room to offer online bargains.
Supporting the start‹and absorbing most of the investment‹will be a massive advertising and promotional campaign drawing Web surfers to the site.
"We have to become a household name," says Meyersdorf.
It's a radically different approach for nontheatrical titles, which account for 10%-15% of the video market.
"Until people know this is available on a mass level, the business is a zero," Meyersdorf adds.
Meyersdorf and his partner, Ira Berkowitz, predict that enough households will purchase cassettes, DVDs, and CD-ROMs to generate first-year sales of $7 million-$8 million‹about half of Amazon.com's second-year revenue. Moreover, LearnAnything will be profitable from the start, they boast.
Amazon.com, which already does a significant video business, will be LearnAnything's biggest competitor but not the only one. The growing swarm of online retailers selling theatrical and nontheatrical titles makes it more difficult than ever to get the attention of customers, says James Spencer, president of Video Learning Library in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Spencer, who operates a modestly financed special-interest Web site with Korean consumer electronics manufacturer Samsung, estimates that his year-old Videomarketplace.com competes against 2,000 other sites.
"No matter how much money you have, it doesn't guarantee you'll be able to establish a brand" like Amazon.com, he adds. "And once the money is gone, [the public] will forget you."
With a $100,000 bankroll, Videomarketplace doesn't stand out.
"Sales have been disappointing for the effort we've put in," Spencer notes. "We're not getting the exposure that we were anticipating."
Even exposure may not help sales. Consultant Jim Lyle of Video Publishing Resources in New York says consumers could use sites like LearnAnything to search for titles before going to Amazon to make a sharply discounted purchase.
Nevertheless, Lyle acknowledges that he was among the crowd that dismissed the instructional video store Meyersdorf and another partner, Jonathan Palgon, opened in Manhattan in November 1991. The tiny How To Video Source outlet generated sales of $1 million in its first year.
Meyersdorf and Palgon, who have since split up, ultimately were victims of their success; underfinanced, they opened two other locations and considered franchising. How To Video folded a few years later, although Meyersdorf continues publishing a catalog under that name and has modified the logo to identify LearnAnything.
If Meyersdorf and Berkowitz get fully financed, the site could take hold, according to consultant Leslie McClure, who advises special-interest producers. "Maybe the answer is money," McClure says. "I'd like to see it happen."
Meyersdorf hopes to have it all as of May 1, 1999, when LearnAnything becomes fully operational with perhaps 100,000 video and computer titles from as many as 10,000 vendors.