ACCORDING TO ANY GIVEN EXPERT, e-commerce sites have grabbed the same share of retail sales it took catalog companies nearly a century to achieve. While business and technology market-research analysts like Jupitermedia admit online sales account for a relatively modest piece of the retail market at roughly 2 percent, the medium has become invaluable for researching purchases. By 2008, Jupitermedia predicts 30 percent of all retail sales will be influenced by the time consumers spend online.

Another proof point: For the fourth quarter of 2004--retail's biggest season--eMarketer, a source for research, data and analysis on e-business, anticipated a 27.4 percent year-over-year jump in online sales to more than $22.3 billion, excluding travel or auction transactions. If you're wondering just how much more potential exists, online auction powerhouse eBay facilitated $8.3 billion in goods traded in the third quarter of 2004, according to a recent financial report.

Jeffrey Grau, senior analyst for eMarketer, cites the "democratization of the retail world" as a primary impetus. For one thing, he says, the online buyer is morphing away from the original stereotype: an upper-middle-class male in his late 20s or early 30s. "It's going much more mainstream," Grau notes. "You're finding that more ethnic minorities are going online. [People in] more rural areas are going online."

From the entrepreneur's perspective, e-commerce dramatically increases the number of customers you can reach. Exclusive research performed by Ipsos-Insight on behalf of PayPal, the online payments division of eBay, found that 72 percent of companies doing business online cited higher sales as a positive outcome of their decision to launch a website. Another 65 percent said they found e-commerce had served to boost their profits.

And the future looks even brighter. Forrester Research, an independent technology research company, projects online sales will reach $316 billion by 2010, or 12 percent of all retail sales; it predicts that by that time, 77 percent of U.S. households will have regular online access, with 40 percent buying online. Forrester estimates most shopping categories will post compound annual growth of between 10 and 20 percent during that period. Certain segments are in line for above-average growth, including tools, hardware, garden supplies and flowers, as consumers shift from ordering over the phone to using online methods.

And then, there's salt.

SALT GESTALT

With a database of l0,000 customers and an anticipated $4 million in 2005 sales, 3-year-old SaltWorks Inc. of Redmond, Washington, bills itself as the world's leading company focused exclusively on sea salt--and we're talking both brick-and-mortar stores and the cyberspace variety.

For 39-year-old founder Mark Zoske, the choice to set up shop on the internet was a no-brainer, although he was worried about fronting the $50,000 to $100,000 it can take just to design a site. But his partner, Naomi Novotny, 34, says it became clear early on that focusing on an e-commerce operation was necessary. "It's our main advantage. We are really the only salt company that specializes in sea salt. There is a credibility level. We are out on the web; our competitors just aren't out there," Novotny says. "It seems like big suppliers of raw material aren't up to speed technology-wise."

SaltWorks (www.seasalt.com) sells everything from shakers of gourmet sea salt to 44,000-pound containers it acquires on behalf of the bigger spice companies.

"If it's a niche and it's spread out all over the world, then some portion of every town has some potential customers. There are some products you just can't sell any other way," says Matthew Roche, co-CEO and president of Offermatica, a San Francisco company that advises websites about how to convert visitors into buyers. "E-commerce is the anti-Wal-Mart," Roche quips.

Certainly, you wouldn't find the Salish Alderwood Smoked Salt that was recently featured on the SaltWorks site at your local grocery store. Both Novotny and Zoske had some previous experience in starting a business, so they split the startup tasks. Novotny negotiated tight relationships with sea-salt farmers in Belgium, France and Israel--often entering into exclusive deals to ensure supply--while Zoske boned up on technology.

Early on, SaltWorks located the server for its website at a local company, sharing the costs with other companies using the same hardware. But with more than 3,000 visitors per day, Zoske says, his site began hogging the server's capacity more quickly than he had anticipated. So SaltWorks bought its own server, although it still hires an outside firm to keep it up and running. To design the site's visual identity and transaction features, Zoske retained an on-staff development expert. The software behind the site includes Microsoft SQL Server (a recent upgrade from the company's original Access database); Microsoft's ASRNET software for developing websites; Macromedia Dreamweaver and Macromedia Flash, which were used for creating animations and other visual content; and graphics-editing software including Adobe Photoshop.

Although he could have hired an outside designer--costing anywhere from $5[degrees] to $200 per hour every time the site needed an update--Zoske went with a staff expert because he needed to update the site often with new information, especially for its extensive salt reference guide. That guide, in fact, is used by SaltWorks in marketing activities to entice visitors to the site. Says Zoske, "We hoped that once they felt like they got something for nothing, maybe they would do some shopping."

GOING, GOING, GOING ...

Conversely, Auctions by the Bay Inc. (www.auctionsbythebay.com) is all about selling--antiques, to be precise.

The business was conceived as an offshoot of a popular antiques and collectibles fair in Alameda, California, in part to clear out goods that didn't sell. But co-founder Allen Michaan sought a bigger audience for his two monthly auctions than local crowds could create. So despite witnessing the failed online efforts of several venerable East Coast auction houses, he turned to eBay, where he and his wife, Sandra, 35, had made numerous purchases of their own. Says Allen, 52, "It was an absolutely logical move for us to put all of this on eBay, live."

"All of this" refers to the 22-person company's art deco-style theater in Alameda Point's former Navy facilities, where up to 450 bidders can view images of each item projected onto a movie screen as it is put up for bid. Simultaneously, employees manage bids submitted over the eBay Live Auctions service. Online bidders view the items via an electronic catalog that is uploaded to eBay prior to each event. For this service, Auctions by the Bay is subject to two fees: It must pay $1,500 for each catalog (up to l0,000 lots) that it uploads for an auction, and it is charged a final value fee of 5 percent of the final sales price to successful internet bidders. For 2004, Allen projects sales of about $4 million.

According to Allen, clients choose the showroom or eBay depending on the weather and the size of lots being auctioned. "If we have a large variety of small merchandise, we tend to sell more on the internet," he says.

That's because shipping fees can escalate quickly for delicate, yet sizable, antiques. Early on, Allen's team began warning online bidders to investigate the costs beforehand, after receiving some negative eBay feedback from buyers shocked by the delivery charges. The priciest item sold to an internet bidder was about $12,000, Allen recalls. "When you start getting into tens of thousands of dollars, it's less likely [for delivery to be a problem]. If there is something they want that badly, they'll show up in person," he says.

One drawback to adding the eBay component is that some bidders who show up in person are overwhelmed by rivals who aren't even in the room. Still, don't assume that gives the locals a disadvantage: Allen relates that some successful internet bidders will show up in person within 15 or 20 minutes to pick up items they've won.

DEMOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY

Although it wasn't conceived as part of her original business plan, Gwen Richardson, 46, says customers of her 6-year-old site, Cushcity.com, seek out her local storefront when they're in Houston.

Cushcity.com, named for the biblical figure Cush, offers what Richardson claims is the internet's widest selection of African-American-centric products, from books to calendars to toys. She started the venture with her husband, Willie, 56, when she found it difficult to find books for their daughter.