Historically, expanding one’s business meant moving to a new, larger retail location or opening a second storefront. Today, small businesses are finding that expanding business is as simple as starting an e-commerce website. Suddenly, the small local business can be a national or global player thanks to the power of the Internet. Every year, e-commerce has seen double digit growth which makes the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE), the number one Internet retailer conference in the world, such an important event.
Last year, over the four day conference, more than 8,600 attendees heard from 175 expert speakers on how to put the power of e-commerce to work for them.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Internet as a commercial network and this year’s conference reflects this achievement with 220 expert speakers, including Al Gore and Buy.com CEO Hiroshi Mikitani, over 600 exhibits and nearly 10,000 expected attendees at the Chicago event.
Also invited to speak this year is Mitch Goldstone, CEO of ScanMyPhotos.com, to discuss how he successfully expanded a once small, local photo lab into a global photo scanning business. Founded in 1990, his company has been a pioneer of technologies that have now scanned more than one hundred million pictures, taking them from analog to digital format. Goldstone will speak about the challenges he faced when taking a business from the borders of a city to offering his services to clients all over the world.
