Canadian Website development and management tools companies InContext Systems Inc and EveryWare Development Corp have agreed to merge their operations, in what appears to be a somewhat desperate bid to make it into profit. Toronto-based InContext also announced an immediate private placement of InContext shares to be taken up by EveryWare. The merger will be by means of either an amalgamation or through shareholders exchanging shares for those of a yet to be named new company. That company would offer corporate customers a full set of development, maintenance and administration tools for commercial web applications. InContext, based in Toronto, was one of the earliest companies to produce a web-site development package, InContext Spider. The package was well-received, but margins were too tight to cover the costs of marketing to retail channels. Recently, InContext announced a shift of focus away from retail to corporate customers. It made a loss of $3.9m on revenues of $1.9m for the year ending March 31 1996, and a loss of just under $6m on revenues of $1.2m for the first nine months of 1997, following the shift from retail sales. EveryWare, based in Mississauga, Ontario, looks to be the dominant partner in the merger. It has concentrated on its Tango series of web/database integration tools, originally on Macintosh platforms, though it introduced Windows NT and Unix versions towards the end of 1996. It made a $1.6m loss to December 31st, on revenues up 187% over the previous year of $4.3m. EveryWare has the corporate focus InContext was attempting to move towards, while InContext has higher visibility in the Windows marketplace. EveryWare also has electronic commerce and Web tracking tools, while InContext’s tools include the WebAnalizer web site administration tool, FlashSite off-line browser, and the soon to be released SiteCommand web site management system.
