8.1. The Company

Founded in 1997, and partially funded by Bill Gates, Yahoo!, and others, Altura International created the Web's first catalog-shopping portal, www.CatalogCity.com. Through a combination of product syndication agreements with major Internet portals (including Yahoo!, Lycos, NBCi, Excite, and others), custom shopping malls (such as www.gifts.com, www.ishopexcel.com, and www.goodcatalog.com), as well as its own destination Web sites (catalogcity.com, catalogcity.co.uk, catalogcity.de, catalogcity.fr, jp.catalogcity.com, and www.productcity.com), Altura International provides a one-stop business-to-consumer resource that provides consumers with easy access to more than 17,000 merchant catalogs and their products.