Without money for advertising, these unknown companies have to promote themselves to potential users, investors, employees and partners.
This approach changed advertising strategy and helped turn unknown companies into household names, including Miracle-Gro and GNC.
Prospecting is often done by small, unknown companies, whose apparent aim is to interest bigger firms, and then sell them stakes in full-blown production.
Why were two relatively unknown companies trying to buy a company like Fashionmall at a time when the financial markets have soured on Internet stocks?
In the hands of much larger institutions, the investment banks that have specialised in start-ups may lose some of their enthusiasm for dealing with unknown companies seeking relatively small amounts of capital.What will replace them?
Many private "certificate authorities" have, in turn, worked with resellers and deputized other unknown companies to issue certificates in a "chain of trust" that now involves many hundreds of players, any of which may in fact be a weak link.
