Steel Connect, Inc. is an American company that provides supply chain management services to software companies. During the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

, the company, which was then known as CMGI, Inc., had a market capitalization of $41 billion and owned the naming rights to the new home stadium of the New England Patriots. Between 1995 and 1999, it had the best-performing stock in the United States, returning 4,921%. After the crash of the bubble, the stock price fell 99%. The company was formerly known as College Marketing Group, CMG Information Systems, and ModusLink Global Solutions, Inc.

History

The company was formed in 1968 as College Marketing Group by Glenn and Gail Mathews. At first, the company sold mailing lists of university faculty to textbook publishers. In 1986, after a leveraged buyout, David Wetherell became CEO. In February 1994, the company became a

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange ( ...

via an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

. That same month, Wetherell founded

BookLink AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

, in which the company invested $900,000. BookLink was sold to America Online in November 1994 and the company used the proceeds of the sale to set up CMG @Ventures, a

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

firm that invested in internet companies. The company invested $1 million for an 80% ownership interest in

Lycos Lycos, Inc., is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company is based in Walth ...

, which was its most profitable investment. In 1997, the company invested in

Geocities Yahoo! GeoCities was a web hosting service that allowed users to create and publish websites for free and to browse user-created websites by their theme or interest. GeoCities was started in November 1994 by David Bohnett and John Rezner, and ...

and it also formed Navisite. In June 1999, the company agreed to acquire an 83% stake in

AltaVista AltaVista was a Web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own sear ...

from

Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...

for $2.3 billion. In September 1999, the company acquired AdForce, founded by

Chad Steelberg Chad Steelberg is an American serial entrepreneur who co-founded AdForce (IPO), 2CAN Media (Sold to CMGi), and dMarc Broadcasting (Sold to Google). Most recently, Chad Steelberg co-founded Veritone. along with his brother, Ryan Steelberg, and s ...

, for $500 million. In November 1999, Altavista acquired

RagingBull.com RagingBull.com is a website focused on financial literacy and day trading. History RagingBull.com was founded in August 1997 by Bill Martin with college partners, Rusty Szurek and Greg Wright, who were 19 years old at the time. It was begun in a ...

after Wetherell noticed the website while on vacation. In March 2000, the company acquired

Yesmail Yesmail Interactive, is now known as Data Axle. The email marketing provider was previously headquartered in Portland, Oregon, Portland, Oregon. Data Axle is headquartered in Dallas, Texas and has offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, ...

. In April 2000, the company acquired

uBid uBid.com was an online auction style and fixed-price shopping website offering goods sold directly by the company and items sold by pre-approved third party uBid-certified merchants. The site specialized in excess new, refurbished and overstock ...

. In May 2000, the company acquired Tallan, Inc. for $920M. In August 2000, the company agreed to pay $7.6 million per year for 15 years for the naming rights of the home stadium of the New England Patriots. In August 2002, after the bursting of the

, the company modified the agreement and the stadium name was changed to

Gillette Stadium Gillette Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium located in the town of Foxborough, Massachusetts, which is southwest of downtown Boston. It serves as the home stadium and administrative offices for both the New England Patriots of the National Foot ...

. In 2000, the company recorded a $661 million gain when

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

acquired its interest in

GeoCities Yahoo! GeoCities was a web hosting service that allowed users to create and publish websites for free and to browse user-created websites by their theme or interest. GeoCities was started in November 1994 by David Bohnett and John Rezner, and ...

. By that time, its stock price had declined 78% from its high earlier in the year. In February 2004, the company acquired Modus Media. In September 2008, the company changed its name to ModusLink Global Solutions, Inc. In December 2017, the company acquired IWCO Direct for $476 million in cash. In February 2018, the company changed its name to Steel Connect, Inc. On Nov. 19, 2020, Steel Partners Holdings LP delivered a non-binding proposal to Steel Connect’s board of directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of common stock not already owned by Steel Partners and its affiliates. As of March 10, 2021, Steel Connect reported that it has not made a decision on the proposal.

References

{{Dot-com Bubble 1968 establishments in Massachusetts Dot-com bubble Online companies of the United States Software companies based in Massachusetts Waltham, Massachusetts Companies listed on the Nasdaq Software companies of the United States