INTERSHOP Founder Joins European Online Medical Venture

[May 8] INTERSHOP founder Stephan Schambach and
Harvard Business School Professor Walter Kuemmerle have
joined the supervisory board of
GloMediX, a
European online marketplace for medical equipment.

Stephan Schambach founded INTERSHOP Communication
ten years ago at age 19 in what was then East
Germany. He has since built the company into a global
e-commerce operation worth billions of dollars.

Professor Kuemmerle, at 33 only slightly older than
Schambach, is a consultant to many top corporations
and holds joint Harvard appointments in the
Entrepreneurial Management and Technology & Operations
faculties. His area of special expertise is in
international entrepreneurial finance.

Stefan Muennighoff, co-founder of GloMedix, referred
to the two men as “distinguished visionaries” and
said he was delighted that they had agreed to sit
on the supervisory board.

“Each brings distinct values that will help us rapidly
achieve our goal of becoming the default online
marketplace for the European medical supplies market,”
said Muennighoff.

GloMediX believes that it can achieve dramatic
reductions in suppliers’ sales and marketing costs,
bringing them down from what is typically 15-25 per cent
of the sales price to what it calls “a low single digit
percentage point.”

“Online marketplaces will dramatically change the way supply
chains are managed, delivering significant efficiency gains
to both buyers and sellers. GloMediX is set to rapidly
achieve this in the European medical equipment market,”
commented Stephan Schambach.

Professor Kuemmerle warned potential competitors
that GloMediX was already establishing significant
barriers to entry for others wanting to enter the
same space on a pan European basis.

During May 2000, GloMediX expects to pilot its service,
employing as many as 100 staff in four European offices
by the end of the year.

Venture capital firm Atlas Venture provided GloMediX
with over $7 million during March 2000.