CONSOLIDATION page 60
SINAI HOSPITAL
The Sinai Prostate Cancer Program invites you to their First Annual
Symposium: "Brachytherapy for Localized Prostate Cancer: A
Promising New Frontier".
This symposium brings together a panel of internationally
recognized experts and innovators in the field. The practicing
health care provider involved with the diagnosis, management and
treatment of prostate cancer will be provided with a
comprehensive overview of this modality, as well as a live,
interactive demonstration.
Saturday, November 16, 1996
8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Sinai Hospital's Zuckerman Auditorium
•
Approved for 5 Category 1 CME credits.
•
Fee for this symposium is $50 for physicians. No charge for
other registrants.
•
Continental breakfast and lunch provided.
For further information on this symposium, please contact Debbie
King, Conference Coordinator at 313-493-5100.
Partial funding for this program has been provided by the Sheldon M. Kantor Memorial
Fund, Sinai Hospital Guild.
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tween $500,000 to $1 million; in
Israel it ranges from $200,000 to
$300,000. As Hasfari points out,
an Israeli CD-ROM company
must sell between 150,000 to
200,000 copies of a CD-ROM in
order to cover net expenses.
For Israeli companies, that
rules out the local market where
a maximum of perhaps 50,000
copies could be sold.
And so, Israeli companies in-
evitably end up targeting the in-
ternational market, which
creates the added pressures of
marketing and distribution. Add
to that the technology which
changes every few months, and
the critical mass required to be a
major player naturally increas-
es, as do the risks.
Hasfari believes that within
the next year Israel's 70 odd mul-
timedia companies will be whit-
tled down to about 10.
"What happened here is that
everyone thought they could be
a multimedia giant, just by get-
ting a grant from the Ministry of
Trade and Industry's chief sci-
entist and setting up shop in
Grandma's old apartment," says
Hasfari, shaking his head. "But
what they didn't get is that for
every dollar you spend in devel-
opment, you need to spend two
to three dollars in marketing."
Hasfari believes
that within the next
year Israel's 70 odd
multimedia
companies will be
whittled down to
about 10.
That was one of the lessons
that Jerusalem-based JeMM
(Jewish Multimedia), learned the
hard way, in the two year's since
it was started up by David Pfef-
fer and Meir Fachler, two British
immigrants who wanted to cre-
ate high quality CD-ROMs for
the Jewish education market in
the United States and England.
In addition to the standard sin-
gle project CDs, they developed
CD-JeMM, a quarterly CD mag-
azine with primarily original ma-
terial covering Israel, upcoming
Jewish holidays and an internal
Jewish wares catalog. The mag-
azine included separate editions
for teenagers and children, re-
lating to the material in the adult
version.
JeMM had produced three is-
sues of the magazine by March
`96, receiving praise and acco-
lades for the project but garner-
ing very few subscribers. Pfeffer,
the. company's managing direc-
tor, had to let the creative staff
go this past spring, retaining only
himself, Fachler and the maga-
zine's editor as full-time employ-
ees. Pfeffer won't disclose the
company's financial figures, but
he blames what he calls a mo-
mentary setback on a lack of
marketing know-how and a
tough Jewish marketplace.
`The process is long and ardu-
ous but now we're making seri-
ous inroads," says Pfeffer, who
adds that at all times either he
or Fachler is in the United States,
making the marketing rounds.
"What we have learned for our-
selves is that it is certainly pos-
sible to produce quality materials
here in Israel — we've never had
to compromiSe because we were
here — but that the Jewish mar-
ket is difficult to penetrate. We
never dreamed that it would be
such a process to make inroads
into the educational market, but
we've learned our lesson."
Now Pfeffer is looking into
strategic partnerships with sev-
eral Jewish educational or com-
munal bodies. While the process
is slow he feels his company has
made tremendous headway and
that there is a will for producing
and marketing quality educa-
tional material. "It's a matter of
finding all the available players,"
he says. "There's no resistance
from the non-profit sector, which
is more political; that we're prof-
it driven is unusual in the Jew-
ish educational field."
When JeMM was established
two years ago, its offices were lo-
cated in Jerusalem's Talpiot in-
dustrial zone, renting office space
that had been recently vacated
by another local CD-ROM legend,
Superstudio.
Founded by two American im-
migrants, Seth Altholz and
Shelly Abrahami, Superstudio
started out as a design company
in 1983 and gradually moved into
the multimedia business.
Thirteen years later, Super-
studio has now been acquired by
SoftKey International Inc., an
American software publisher,
and Altholz has left the compa-
ny to pursue other dreams.
Michael Oren, the newly hired
CEO, waxes poetic when he talks
about the company.
Superstudio was "the vision of
Shelly and Seth," he says,
stretching his arm as if encom-
passing the entire CD-ROM em-
pire in one fell swoop. "They
made all this and they started
from very little, eventually build-
ing the largest multimedia corn-
pany in Asia. And neither of them
has turned 40 yet."
Of course, Oren adds, they had
a little help in the form of two ma-
jor acquisitions. The first was
Harry Fox, CEO and founder of
Future Vision, a multimedia pub-
lishing company based in Long
Island, N.Y., who looked to Israel
for research and development aid
in the early 1990s. Fox estab-
lished a network of CD-ROM pro-
duction contacts in Israel and,
using the local talent for devel-
opment, provided access to retail