A store cannot sell what it cannot describe. Online stores had a basic problem: the product details they needed lived in dozens of places, in different formats, owned by different suppliers. OnDisplay made software that gathered that content and got it ready for the web. When it filed to go public in late 1999, e-commerce sites were multiplying. Every one of them needed something to put in the window.

Catalogs on Paper and Spreadsheets

OnDisplay bet that content integration would become a core layer of online commerce. Suppliers kept their catalogs in databases, spreadsheets and paper. Without help, each site had to clean up every supplier's data on its own. OnDisplay's software pulled that information together, cleaned it, and kept it current. Retailers and marketplaces could then show accurate products and prices without rebuilding their own systems.

$1.7 Billion in Vignette Stock

OnDisplay priced at $28 a share in December 1999 and rose quickly in the last rush of the dot-com market. It did not stay independent for long. In 2000 Vignette, the content management company, agreed to buy OnDisplay in an all-stock deal worth about $1.7 billion when it was announced. Later that year the market collapsed, and the value of that stock fell sharply.

Cover: Cadart's Shop Window, Pierre-Georges Jeanniot. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a print-shop window (goods on display).