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BENNY ABOUD & AMIR AHMED – HOMES.ORG
CEO Interview - published 02/04/2008
BENNY ABOUD is CEO of homes.org. Prior to founding the company, Mr. Aboud opened
his first wireless store while he pursued a degree in Finance. Over the next few
years, this one wireless store morphed into 120 major mall locations, reaching
from Connecticut to Florida and including a 30,000 square foot logistics center.
Following over a decade of being part of the wireless market in the early 1990s
with his lead-by-example entrepreneurial style, Mr. Aboud branched out in other
directions, establishing an efficient marketing and advertising company that
primarily marketed its own products and services. In 2002, Mr. Aboud sold the
Wireless Division to Cingular Wireless, now AT&T. Following the sale, over the
next few years he developed homes.org, which he envisioned as his first
business-to-consumer enterprise to premier by offering a menu of name brand home
services at the best rates and bundling packages. Mr. Aboud is a founding member
of homes.org, which offers both an on-line and off-line option. The on-line goal
is to offer a leading consumer destination that provides immediate access to
information lowering the cost of living on home services by utilizing the One
Destination, Unlimited Possibilities® Website platform. In early 2007, Mr. Aboud
launched the homes.org consumer Website and homes.org Utility Switching
Concierge Service, a cost effective and diverse sales and marketing company
conceived to efficiently market home services to consumers. The vision, now in
its first phase, will advance with additional home services and vertical
partners to embark over the next few years.
AMIR AHMED is President of homes.org. In 1993, he joined EchoStar Satellite
Corporation. As Senior Vice President of Sales and Distribution for EchoStar,
Mr. Ahmed played an instrumental role in establishing DISH Network as the
fastest growing paid television service in the United States. During his 13
years at EchoStar, he successfully developed and maintained strategic
partnerships with major national retailers as well as thousands of independent
satellite retailers, thus creating a unique competitive advantage. His overall
responsibilities included sales, distribution, operations, growth strategies,
dealer management and strategic relationships. At homes.org, Mr. Ahmed utilizes
his sales and marketing expertise to develop key strategic distribution channels
while transforming homes.org into a national consumer brand. Mr. Ahmed's passion
and dedication, as well as his motivational leadership style, create a company
culture committed to excellence and assures that each homes.org customer enjoys
their experience. Mr. Ahmed is a graduate of Indiana University, and holds a BA
in Business from the Kelley School of Business.
SECTOR – CONSUMER SERVICES
TWST: May we start with a short history and overview of your company?
Mr. Aboud: Our core business for many, many years was a direct marketing company
and a retail chain where we were a performance-based sales company in which we
sold wireless services and satellite services.
In the last 16 months, we have converted our business model to become more of
the "Matchmaker" in the home services arena matching services and products to
consumers through comparison shopping. What we mean by that is that we are very
much like Expedia. You can go on-line or call Expedia and view all of the
pricing options for the different airlines, hotels and rental cars. Thus, our
business model is the same. The difference is we offer home services instead of
travel options. We are able to supply you with any type of video, Internet, or
telephone service by the providers in the market. Those providers may include,
depending on your area, DISH Network, ADT, Vonage, Comcast, DirecTV, Verizon,
AT&T, and Time Warner or others.
TWST: Can you elaborate on your role as a "Matchmaker" of home services?
Mr. Aboud: When I say homes.org is the "Matchmaker" of home services, what I
mean is that we are just like Google, eBay and Amazon which provide a simple
platform as a "Matchmaker" to consumers to find products and services. homes.org
is in a trillion dollar industry providing consumers with information,
education, and comparison shopping.
But what makes us unique is that we are not just an information or lead
generation source. Like Amazon, we deliver the service to the customer and
receive a bounty from the service provider. We actually are hooked up through
an API with our partners, where we can set up the installation, the billing, and
the service directly to the consumer. We, as a company, are working with the
customer from the time of the interest level all the way down to the activation
level. Then the provider takes on the responsibility of servicing the consumer.
TWST: Can you explain how you developed this business model?
Mr. Aboud We recognized that people are totally lost when they move into a new
neighborhood or when they are just looking to lower their cost of living. Prior
to homes.org, when consumers were shopping for essential home services and
considering pricing options, they were forced to go to multiple sites for their
various services which is very time-consuming. Now homes.org provides a
solution. There is one destination where they can either log on to, homes.org,
or they can speak to a live representative by calling our 800 number and will be
able to analyze and compare the different rates of the service providers.
Whether it is Verizon FiOS, or Time Warner Cable, or DISH Network, the customer
can see the different options on the video side, the different options on the
internet side, and the different options on the telephone side as well as the
best prices.
It is a very unique business model. What we have been able to do is identify
different ways of driving the traffic. One of our ways of driving the traffic is
we have contracts with the top moving companies out there, such as Allied and
North American among others, where we are their private concierge service. When
the consumer moves from point A to point B, we are contacted by the consumer to
set up all the home services for that particular consumer.
In addition to that, we also do our own marketing, focusing on off-line and on-
line marketing with strategic partnerships, and one-on-one types of marketing to
send a message out there that, "If you are looking to lower your cost of living,
or if you are looking to compare the services in your area, come utilize our on-
line discovery tool or contact our concierge service" and we are able to give
you the different options as it pertains to your particular area.
TWST: What are the trends and the market drivers for the type of consumer
services that you are offering?
Mr. Ahmed: Home services is our core competency. That includes the video, the
Internet, broadband, telephone and home security services. How do you go out
there and really build that? It is an opportunity for us, in my opinion, to
reach some vertical markets as it relates to building the infrastructure and
adding other products. That could be a mortgage product, or insurance products.
We can go out there and leverage this platform to many of the consumer
electronics accounts around the country, where they do tremendous volume in
terms of selling computers and selling televisions, but they also should be
taking advantage of asking that customer, "By the way, you bought this beautiful
television, let me also go ahead and hook you up with a service provider in your
area with the services that you need." That account can go out and do individual
deals with all the providers or they can deal with homes.org. We can give them
the platform for their sales agents, or their call centers. We can go ahead and,
based on the customer's address and zip code, give their customer the service
and pricing options and schedule everything for them. That is a huge opportunity
for them because there is additional revenue coming in for that provider instead
of just margin on the hardware. We see tremendous, tremendous opportunity there.
We launched in April of 2007 with a few thousand services. We are currently
selling, in January of '08, 85,000 services to over 55,000 unique customers with
a 20% monthly growth rate. By year-end we should easily be around one million
services.
TWST: Do you provide this service nationwide?
Mr. Ahmed: Our market coverage is such that we have over 97% of the cable
companies, over 90% of the telecommunications companies, and 100% of the
satellite companies, so at a national level both on the phone side, the video
side, and Internet, we can service north of 95% of all households in the United
States.
With our homes.org discovery tool, a consumer just by keying in their street
address and zip code – that is all we need – will be able to see all of the
different options within their neighborhood from the telcos, the cable companies
and the satellite companies.
TWST: Could you comment on the state of the housing market as you see it from
your perspective and the impact it is having on your operations?
Mr. Ahmed: The housing market actually compliments our business model because we
target cost conscious consumers that are looking to save money on their monthly
bills. The housing market thus is, right now, in a crisis. It helps the
consumers, who are moving, to focus on their fixed month to month bills.
TWST: Could you comment on some of your current partnerships and your future
plans to partner with mortgage and financial companies?
Mr. Aboud: Right now, some of our key vendors or service providers are companies
like Time Warner, DISH Network, DirecTV, AT&T, Comcast, Charter Cable, Cox, and
Verizon. Those are some of our partners. Our future partners are financial
giants such as Fidelity or Citigroup and, in the insurance arena, all the major
insurance companies like AIG, State Farm, etc.
One of the things that we are able to do for these guys is deliver a customer
through a very low cost marketing effort and, more importantly than low cost, at
a fixed cost. For a lot of these service providers, there really is no risk in
partnering up with us because it is a fixed cost for a quality customer. The
exposure is really on homes.org and our pipeline.
TWST: How would you size up your market opportunity?
Mr. Aboud: Currently, if you look at the cable industry alone it grossed $68
billion in 2006. It will hit $121 billion in 2017. Those are actually the
industry revenue streams according to SNL Kagan Reports and Marketing Charts. To
read off our stat sheet "Research shows $80 billion in Internet services." The
telecommunication industry (including wireless) is going to reach over a
trillion dollars in the next three years. As a result, homes.org is positioned
to be a major player in this over trillion dollar industry.
TWST: Given the vast potential, what is the competition doing?
Mr. Ahmed: There are a few companies out there that do provide these types of
services, but it is more on a lead generation basis; it is more like an on-line
platform. What makes us unique is that we have a complete call center and a
concierge environment, therefore we prefer the customer to go out there and
research whatever they want, but we also want them to give us a call so that
they can have that experience. For the moving industry, as an example, we offer
a complete concierge service. We just don't want that customer spending time
on-line. I think that is what makes us unique and different.
Then, eventually we will go into the financial end of it through the mortgage
industry, insurance industry, and gas/electric or whatever it is. We are one
destination that any American can go to and type in their address and zip code
and have ready access to all of the offers in the area. That is the goal.
TWST: Give us the scenario for the next two to three years.
Mr. Aboud: For the next two or three years, we want to continue to bring on
service providers in the video, internet and cable industry and continue
launching them through an API. We will also continue bringing on other partners,
such as consumer electronics retailers, and on-line partners that compliment our
service provider options.
The combination of both service providers and selling partners continues to
build our most cherished asset, our brand, through different types of events:
promotions, television advertising, and radio advertising promoting the
homes.org "Matchmaker" type of business model. We will then move into vertical
services as we continue to build our customer base, our brand, and penetrate
vertically by mimicking our business model in the financial and insurance
sectors, and in the utility, gas and electric sectors.
We believe that within three years our homes.org platform technology discovery
tool will be able to facilitate consumers' purchases all the way from home
services, through to their gas and electric services to the financial services,
including looking at different types of options on credit card services, billing
services, mortgage services, and insurance products, to name a few. We will
become one destination for a customer to use and really be able to analyze all
of the different types of services and options within that particular area.
Now, what makes our model very unique is we don't make our money from paid
advertisers and we don't make our money by sending a lead to our partners. We
make our money by actually receiving a commission and in many cases an annuity
from some of our service providers. Our revenue stream is not really driven on
advertising dollars or lead generation; it is actually on conversions.
It has made it a lot easier for us to sign up a partnership with the service
provider because not only do we supply the consumer, but we actually take the
process of the sale from point A to point B in executing that sale. We also
support that sale with our call center environment professional concierge
services. That really helps the customer in making the right decision.
TWST: What is the current employee count at homes.org and to what level will it
grow?
Mr. Ahmed: We have over 400 employees. About 8% of our staff is IT. Our two
largest expenses are variable costs. One is marketing, the other large variable
cost is payroll. 80% of our payroll expense is for our sales agents, and by year
end it will be 90%. That is all a result of the traffic we are able to drive.
There is no inventory cost. There are no real estate expenses or long-term
leases. So our two major expenses are variable costs which are easily
controllable.
TWST: Any final thoughts?
Mr. Aboud: What is really important here is that every American could use our
services and it costs them nothing. That is really important because we get paid
by our service providers, so the information that we roll out to the 330 million
Americans out there is absolutely free. Another key component to our business
model is that it could be taken internationally.
TWST: Thank you. (WT)
BENNY ABOUD
Founder & CEO
AMIR AHMED
President
Homes.org
3303 W. Commercial Blvd.
2nd Floor
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33309
(954) 657-9600
(866) 699-5796 – FAX
http://www.homes.org
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