"Doing Business on the Net" - Royal Bank of Canada Interest Magazine, July/August 1999

Cellie Gonsalves was a senior executive with a major Canadian corporation when she decided to make a lifestyle change. She quit her job and started a business on the Internet.

Cyberflowers (www.cyberflowers.com) went online in November 1998. Within a few short months, Gonsalves discovered she had tapped into a truly global marketplace directly from her computer. Today, she operates both a flower shop and a thriving online floral site that draws customers from Moncton to Los Angeles to Taipei. Gonsalves is thrilled with her success.

Before launching Cyberflowers.com, Gonsalves planned for a year. She designed her site carefully, making sure to build in incentives that would catch the attention of online surfers and give them a reason to return again and again. For instance, she offered a free cyber bouquet to those who visited the site, enabling them to send a musical floral bouquet to someone special. She also offered a service that would remind surfers of significant dates such as birthdays and anniversaries - in the hope that they would order real flowers to mark those occasions.

A Royal Bank client, Gonsalves turned to the bank for advise in several areas, including how to provide complete security for her clients' transactions and how to keep customer service consistently high in an operation where clients place orders around the clock seven days a week.

"Hers is a success story of an internet start-up," says Don Blue, the bank's senior vice-president, Electronic Commerce. "It's also a graphic demonstration of the potential power of the Internet."