Alliance Virtually Enhances Sales

MediaLab, whose multimedia programs include virtual-reality products, and iBidCo, creator of online home sales systems and events, have formed an alliance to give builders tools for selling and marketing homes online.

"Whether you're just marketing your homes and communities online or selling them, the virtual tour is the key marketing component to grab the home buyer," says Richard Jackson, executive vice president of iBidCo.

Michael Lozicki , president of Media-Lab, points to his firm's plat map virtual tour technology (pictured), which allows real-time product selection and pricing of op-tions and homes on specific or pre-determined lots, as an example of how the companies' collaborative technology engages customers. He says the technologies can be customized to a builder's back-office systems, Web site databases and other sales management and production databases.

"This partnership is about synergy, being able to provide services other organizations can't," Jackson says. "It will benefit our builder customer and in the long run the consumer."