nterview: Miva Merchant CEO, EVP on Moving to a SAAS Business Model

Miva Merchant is among the most prominent ecommerce brands. The company was launched in 1995 as HTMLScript Corporation, and it’s one of the early day shopping cart providers. It rose, and then fell, with the first dotcom boom and bust. In 2005, the company sold to Findwhat.com, a publicly-traded, pioneering online advertising network, which then changed its name to Miva. The new Miva later sold the shopping cart division, called Miva Merchant, to private investors in 2007.

Observers of Miva Merchant have long believed that its business model, selling software licenses to hosting companies for as little as $50 apiece, is flawed. The model provided a small, one-time revenue injection, but left the company saddled with ongoing expenses, observers believed. Moreover, critics of Miva Merchant claim that its software required the use of third-party modules, but many of those modules conflict and do not function on all versions of the shopping cart.

Into all of this stepped Russ Carroll, who is now the CEO and majority owner of Miva Merchant. Carroll led the private investor group that purchased the company in August 2007. A seasoned, successful entrepreneur, Carroll is trained in astrophysics and space science and spent the early part of his career in that field. In time, he entered the business world and became the CEO of Providence Systems, a provider of training and coaching products. Rick Wilson, who had previously worked at Miva Merchant, headed-up sales at Providence Systems, and it was Wilson who persuaded Carroll to purchase Miva Merchant after Carroll had successfully sold his interest in Providence. Wilson is now executive vice president of Miva Merchant.

Carroll says he’s always known that Miva Merchant’s business model was broken. He says he first focused on improving both the software itself and customer service. The move to a recurring-revenue, software-as-a-service model happens on May 1, 2009. In conjunction with that switch, Carroll and Wilson visited with Practical eCommerce publisher Kerry Murdock.