THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 6, 1997 TAG: 9701040286
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY KIA MORGAN ALLEN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 103 lines
Call them unconventional. Call them radical Rembrandts with Bill Gates gumption or just call up iTRiBE on the Internet.
Keith Basil, a senior at Norfolk State University, and Johnny George II, a 1994 graduate, combined art with computers and created iTRiBE.
The duo designs custom web sites and Internet-based applications, and through their work, bring businesses to the Internet and the Internet to businesses.
Barely a year in the business, they have enabled local companies like Hall Auto World to forge a new path by going global. Millions of users can buy a car and get it financed right on their hassle-free home page.
Even Santa Claus has a popular site created last year called Christmas.com. It's where Santa - an iTRiBE employee - receives and answers e-mail from thousands of children worldwide. Hundreds of thousands call up the site by the minute, Basil said, and millions check in by the hour.
But Basil, founder and vice president of iTRiBE, and George, creative director, don't sweat their success.
They're rather reserved, insightful, generation Xers with an insatiable appetite for business. They're not your ordinary computer whiz kids.
Don't expect to find them in their World Trade Center office in double-breasted suits from 9 to 5. And if you think you'll catch them in geeky glasses or garb, forget it.
George and Basil both sport flowing shoulder-length dreadlocks, wear jeans, T-shirts and African dashikis, giving iTRiBE an ethnic flair.
Their prescription for success doesn't come in a bottle or from a book: it comes from self-satisfaction.
``I had to teach myself the basics of animation. I learned more outside of school than in the actual classroom,'' said George who designed Santa riding the information superhighway on his cyber-sleigh at the Christmas.com site.
In school, George, a computer graphics major, envisioned mixing art and computers.
He had a passion to create paintings but preferred to use a Macintosh computer as his canvas. He wanted to make a career of it and believed his idea would fly.
But some highbrow professors thought they'd bring him back down to earth.
``They told me that I would never be able to do it,'' George said. ``Those two professors weren't thinking far enough to see where it was going nine years ago.''
That was then, this is now.
For George, 28, art and computers go together like a telephone and fax machine.
After college, George started collecting marketing literature to help give him an edge in business.
``Not only do you have to really get it (knowledge) yourself, but the way the world is going in the corporate arena, students have to get much broader.''
It's a different slant to saying, ``go to school and just get good grades,'' he said.
``If you get good grades and don't have the foundation and wealth of knowledge, good grades are useless.''
Basil shared the same beliefs.
``I grew up on the Net and I saw what was happening,'' he said. ``I saw it as a grand opportunity. You have to almost see it coming.''
And Basil did. He watched the Internet grow and decided to use his insight and skills to create his first business, Internet Presence & Publishing. It was later renamed iTRiBE.
The ambitious 27-year-old started his first business in an office at the World Trade Center in Norfolk. It was funded by friends and family.
He has since partnered with Anil Palat, Mark Imbriaco, Mike Adolphi and Paul Wong.
Basil and George said having a business like theirs involves more than simply creating a web page.
``Anyone can make a web page, but that person may not understand how it will translate into dollars for a company,'' Basil said.
``You may not get an immediate response from customers if the page is not planned right and your medium is not established.''
So to ensure that a web page created for a client is successful, a study, or detailed profile anaylsis, is done to determine what type of site will work best.
``Without the right insight and consultation, (a website) will be useless,'' George said.
Sharing the same vision and common goals is what connected the two guys at iTRiBE when they met up in the early '90s.
``We just followed our passions,'' Basil said. That passion aided them in building a worldwide juggernaut for success on the Internet.
Basil and George may be traveling a tough trail into the business world, but the entrepreneurs have drummed up revenues for the business and a profit for themselves.
``We've made a lot of money and we've spent a lot of money,'' Basil said.
``Are we living in a mansion?'' George said raising a question.
``No. We're still struggling but we're not missing meals.''
But he says, ``It keeps us hungry. Once you lose that edge and leave that comfort zone, then it's over.''
``Then someone in Japan will run you over,'' piped in Basil. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
BETH BERGMAN
The Virginian-Pilot
Computer-world entrepreneurs Johnny George, left, and Keith Basil
sports flowing shoulder-length dreadlocks, wear jeans, T-shirts and
African dashikis, giving iTRIBE an ethnic flair.
KEYWORDS: WORLD WIDE WEB INTERNET PROFILE