EBISTRADE, Inc.(headquartered at Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, headed by the CEO FURUYA Kenichiro), a joint company owned by Nissho Iwai and six other firms, which specializes in helping launch new businesses using IT to be part of an effort for renovating industrial structures, started on March 28"Mantannet Dot. Com" (http://www.mantannet.com) as an electronic commerce site to provide support services for gasoline station operators.

As a matter of fact, gasoline station operators , whose business has entered an age of greatest ever competition, see their business environment grow increasingly rigorous day by day with the prevailing severe price competition and with the growing entries into the business from other business areas, so much so that many of them find themselves quite at a loss how to operate their shops profitably.

Realizing that it is necessary now to come up with a networking that works outs and practices appropriate gasoline station management systems for the new age through consultation with many of the gasoline station operators, EBISTRADE, Inc. has chosen to set up the "Mantannet.Dot.Com", which, funded by the member fees, will provide a range of support services for the sales efforts of the gasoline station operators, including support for increased use of IT and provision of relevant information & intelligence necessary for improved business management - the kind of business support services which has never existed before - through alliances with all the companies involved in this project as supporters or co-sponsors.

"Mantannet.Dot.Com" expects to enlist 500 member companies for the first year and 3,000 for the third year, with a projected business volume of six billion yen for the first year and 30 billion yen for the third year, using this site as the base. The idea is to enlist as members, and organize into a networking, those gasoline station operators who are conscious of the present problematic situation, regardless of which business grouping, or "keirestu", they may or may not belong to, and thereby to produce stronger voices and greater power to get things done as a result of joined forces than when individual gasoline station operators work separately so that individual brands of their own may be developed on-site at their gasoline stations.