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Media Contact Travel and business editors and writers may contact leskelly (at) concentric.net by e-mail. Also see Contact Page Media Coverage Amish.Net Completes Seven Years of Service to America's Amish Country CNN Books News for August 7, 2000 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Berlin, Ohio. Wednesday, April 5, 2000. The first portal website dedicated to information about the Amish lifestyle and tourism and shopping in America's Amish Country is now available at http://Amish.Net, according to Leslie A. Kelly, CEO of Amish.Net The Company. At the same time, Kelly also announced the May 2000 release of America's Amish Country II (Revisiting America's Amish Country), which he co-authored with Doyle Yoder of Berlin, Ohio. According to Kelly, "The Amish are making use of the Internet for business purposes even though they do not have electricity in their homes and don't surf the Net. They are adopting some of the newest technologies, such as cellular phones, pagers and computers, in the operation of businesses in some of the more progressive settlements. "With Amish settlements in twenty four states and Ontario, Canada, and available farmland on the decline, more Amish are turning to making furniture, quilts, and specialty foodstuffs to take advantage of the ever increasing demand for their renowned craftsmanship and increased tourism to their rural areas. "While Amish businesses advertise their wares in local and traditional print publications, they have resisted direct use of the Internet and there are no known websites hosted by an Amish business. However, much as they have done for the past three hundred plus years since their founding in 1693, they are relying on non-Amish friends, neighbors or other businesses, Englishers as the Amish call them, to deal with the new technology and, in this case, advertise their goods on the Internet for them," Kelly noted. Amish.Net is the first portal website to provide a single source for those seeking information about the Amish lifestyle, Amish Made products and travel and tourism information for all areas of America's Amish Country. "There are excellent sites that serve specific geographical areas such as Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Holmes County, Ohio, and Northern Indiana. More eCommerce websites are appearing that offer Amish Made products," says Kelly. "It is logical that a portal website bring all of this information and product availability together, hence our slogan: 'Bringing America's Amish Country To The World @ Amish.Net'. Just about everything Amish or Amish related can be found on this one site without having to look through various search engines and many websites. This increases the business opportunities for the listed merchants and offers extra value for web searchers," according to Kelly. Operated by Amish.Net The Company, based in Huntington Beach, California, Amish.Net was launched on February 15, 2000. Since that time, more than three hundred Amish or Amish related businesses have been listed in its directory of services and goods. Additional merchants are being added daily from the estimated potential field of one thousand merchants, large and small, which offer Amish Made furniture, quilts, crafts, cheese and numerous other products throughout America's Amish Country. Listed also are B&Bs, motels, theme parks, Amish farms and tours of the various areas from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, north to Ontario, Canada, south to Yoder, Kansas and west to Libby, Montana. A number of Amish businesses are listed, to include Miller's Dry Goods (a major retailer of Amish made quilts that does not have a website) based in Charm, Ohio, and Amish Hickory Rockers in Mt. Gilead, Ohio. The website for Amish Hickory Rockers (http://www.bright.net/~rainmkr/index.html) is maintained by an Englisher neighbor and displays pictures of the Amish craftsman's rocker and his shop, with his buggy parked beside it. All contact is through the Englisher neighbor, Ron Roberson, rather than directly with the Amish craftsman. The Vintage General Store in Intercourse, Pennsylvania (http://www.w98.com/amish.html) offers Shoo-Fly Pie, Funnel Cake Mixes and other "old time" goods used by the Amish. Small, growing eCommerce sites, specializing in local Amish crafts, such as Amish Country Treasures (http://www.amishtreasures.com) Worth Crafting (http://worthcrafting.com), Amish Pleasures (http://amishshop.com), Amish Crafts (http://amishretail.com) and eGiftOutlet (http://www.egiftoutlet.com) are also listed. Major Amish Country business groups, which already have a strong web presence, are listed at Amish.Net. They include the Dutch Corporation (http://www.dutchcorp.com/) based in Walnut Creek, Ohio, with Der Dutchman restaurants throughout Ohio, Amish Acres (http://amishacres.com) in Nappanee, Indiana, Das Dutchman Essenhaus (http://www.essenhaus.com/) in Middlebury, Indiana, Yoder Department Store (http://yoderdepartmentstore.com) in Shipshewana, Indiana, Riegsecker Marketplace (http://www.riegsecker.com/) in Shipshewana, Indiana, Dutch Wonderland (operators of numerous attractions in Lancaster, http://dutchwonderland.com) and Amish Country Foods (http://dutchwonderland.com) in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Amish Heartland (a tourism publication business at (http://www.amish-heartland.com) in Millersburg, Ohio, Lehman's, suppliers of non-electric and old fashioned goods to the Amish and the world (http://www.lehmans.org) in Kidron, Ohio, the Smucker Family's Restaurants and Motels in Bird-In-Hand, Pennsylvania (http://www.bird-in-hand.com) and Rockome Gardens Theme Park (http://rockome.com) built around a former Amish farm in Arcola, Illinois. With more sophisticated travelers seeking adventure in unusual places and ways, Amish.Net offers a single website to plan a unique vacation where the horse and buggy are commonplace. Shoppers will find direct sources for popular Amish products and services such as furniture, quilts foods and crafts as well as listings for traditional brick and mortar stores. Amish Friendship Bread, a favored recipe, is one of the most popular categories found in the Directory. America's Amish Country is the source for "Visiting The Amish" and "Amish Lifestyle" pages, which provides information about the Amish and their history. "Amish Life Newsletter" will be sent monthly to those who have signed up from June 1, 2000. Amish Life FAQs is an opportunity to ask the Amish about their lifestyle and other related questions. Amish.Net offers various listing FREE and PAID advertising programs for merchants. Web hosting services are also offered with more than ninety Amish related domain names available for lease or purchase, to include http://4amish.com, http://amishcrafts.com, http://4amishquilts.com, http://go2amish.com, http://amishfriendshipbread.com and http://amishpeople.com. A complete listing in found in the website. According to Kelly, since its launch Amish.Net has received a warm welcome from Englisher merchants in America's Amish Country as well as some interest from the Amish. "The Amish are always cautious when considering a new technology. They first carefully evaluate its long-term impact on their lifestyle and may reject it for use in their daily lives. Development of this potentially large market will likely continue at a slow but steady pace," he adds. "Our primary goal for Amish.Net is to expand its database of Amish related businesses and, in time, to form an alliance with either a major partner in the tourism industry or merchandising. Is there an IPO and major expansion planned? We don't have an IPO in our immediate plans. However, strong interest and year over year growth in this important tourism and merchandising segment will offer an excellent opportunity for expansion of the services offered by Amish.Net," concludes Kelly. Kelly is well known in Amish Country for his award winning book, America's Amish Country. It was first published in 1993 and co-authored with Doyle Yoder, also a photographer and native of Holmes County, Ohio, and whose grandparents were Amish. Kelly and Yoder will release their newest book, America's Amish Country II (Revisiting America's Amish Country) in late May 2000. The book may be ordered from America's Amish Country Publications (http://ohioamish.com) from April 15, 2000. Kelly has traveled extensively as a photographer and businessman throughout North America, with visits to the major Amish settlements in the US and Ontario, Canada, and has contacts with many Amish and Amish related businesses. American Web Services (http://www.americanwebservices.com) of Sacramento, California, hosts Amish.Net and other websites operated by Kelly to include Show Me The Gold® Tours (http://showmethegold.com) and California's Gold Rush Country (http://goldrush1849.com). Kelly may be contacted by visiting http://Amish.Net/Contact.asp. Amish.Net In The News Amish.com? Virtual Slices Of Amish Life Hit The Web 03/21/2000 Dow Jones News Service (Copyright © 2000, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) By Dinah Wisenberg Brin PHILADELPHIA -(Dow Jones)- The words "Amish" and "dot-com" may not go together like horse and carriage, but the "plain people" who shun cars and electricity haven't entirely missed the Internet revolution. Most Amish themselves are unlikely to have the phone and utility lines needed even to visit the World Wide Web, much less launch their own e-commerce enterprises, but numerous sites promoting their crafts and foods, or travel to their hometowns, have arrived on the Internet. Some sites are nearly as homegrown as the products they sell, operating from houses, requiring phone, land-mail or e-mail orders. Others look like slick e-tailers, allowing customers to purchase directly with a few clicks. In the mood for some pickled salad or applesauce from Lancaster County, the heart of Pennsylvania's Amish country? How about shoofly pie mix or pickled watermelon rind? Such delicacies are available at Amish Country Foods, http://www.amishcountryfoods.com, or the Vintage General Store, circa 1758, at www.w98.com/amish.html. Vintage also offers medicated bag ointment, a veterinary balm for cow's udder. Two new sites run by a Lancaster County couple, http://www.amishmarketplace.com and http://www.paarts.com, offer quilts, wall hangings, furniture and rugs crafted by Amish neighbors with whom the pair have cultivated relationships. Other sites, such as http://amishshop.com and http://allamish.com, sell a wide array of items made by, or about, the Amish. "The Amish themselves would not operate the Web site," said Leslie A. Kelly, who has co-authored photo books about the Amish and recently launched a site at http://www.amish.net, which posts information on their lifestyle and links to related stores, bed-and-breakfasts, travel companies and tourist bureaus. "I'm not aware of any Amish who actually have a Web site." The Amish, members of a Christian sect, generally choose a modest lifestyle of plain dress, avoiding most modern conveniences in favor of horse-drawn buggies, kerosene lamps and wood or coal heating stoves, his site notes. Besides farming, many make a living selling goods they have crafted in kitchens or workshops. Some of the more liberal New Order Amish use cellular or pay phones, voice mail or pagers for business, Kelly explained, but most Amish are Old Order and eschew such appliances. Sites Not Amish-Run Kelly, of Huntington Beach, Calif., estimates there are several hundred Amish-themed Web sites - likely all run by non-Amish. A few, he said, appear devoted to particular Amish craftsmen, but are probably operated by "English," or non-Amish, neighbors. "Legally, under their church rules, (they) cannot have anything to do with the Internet," said Henry Fisher, who was raised Amish but left the fold at 18. Even New Order Amish who might use computers for bookkeeping may not surf the Internet, according to Fisher, so Amish goods reach the Web through third parties. Fisher owns Amish Country Foods http://amishcountryfoods.com in Leola, Pa., the mail-order division of his nephew's company in nearby Intercourse, Stoltzfus Kountry Kitchen, which sells foods from the Amish and the less conservative Mennonite sect. "The mail-order division was extremely successful but the only people who knew about it were those who visited Lancaster County," the site says. "Henry knew that there were people all over who were searching for these products but didn't know where to look to get them. The surge of businesses using the Internet was Henry's answer." Fisher, 45 years old, doesn't advertise, but customers throughout the U.S. have found the site, he told Dow Jones Newswires. Dorothea Parrish, 45, a former Philadelphia music teacher, and her husband, Laurence, 56, who took early retirement two years ago from his vice president job at insurer Marsh & McLennan Cos. (MMC) in Minnesota, run http://www.paarts.com and http://www.amishmarketplace.com, from their home in Pequea, Lancaster County, Pa. Their business is Pennsylvania Arts. "We like quilts. We like dealing with the Amish. We like their ethical values. We decided to go into the quilt business," she said. "We started contacting Amish women by going up to farms, getting referrals. ... As time went by we developed a working relationship with quite a few of them." Unlike many big-time Internet businesses, the Parrishes' has no debt and turns a profit, though it's not huge. "I'm not Bill Gates. Never will be either, unless Bill Gates starts buying quilts from us," she said. At first the couple, who met on the Internet, had no plans for a Web site. They displayed quilts at home shows, an exhausting enterprise with inconsistent results, and released a catalog. They also advertise in magazines. A Home-Grown Site Besides the physical labor of the shows, "I couldn't take people coming up to my face and accusing me of things like ripping off the Amish," said Mrs. Parrish. "If anything, we have a lower markup than any retail business I know." The quilts can cost $800, more than some sold elsewhere, but she said that's because she buys high-quality goods. The couple taught themselves HTML, the language used to create Web sites, and purchased page-making software. Their sites opened last fall. Amish quilters who visit see the computer but don't seem to grasp the concept of millions of Internet users, she said. "They understand a thousand." Sales, while on target, probably need to triple in the next year or so for the couple to make their previous income; otherwise, she said, one will have to return to the workforce. "It's definitely not what we expected," said Mrs. Parrish of running her own business. "I think everyone dreams of becoming wealthy overnight, and of course that doesn't happen." Ron Roberson's low-frills Internet site is more of a hobby for the 72-year-old retired Navy chaplain, said his wife, Ann. Roberson, of Mount Gilead, Ohio, sells hickory rockers crafted by Ruben Yoder, an Amish man he befriended. Yoder's name doesn't appear on the site, http://www.bright.net/~rainmkr/index.html, which has a few photos and says the rocker "looks nice in living room, dining room or den." Roberson's advertising consists of a business card. "He doesn't make much off of it. He enjoys doing this thing," Ann Roberson said of her husband. Still, she added, he has shipped rockers to both coasts. Jeanette Triphan, 50, of Soldiers Grove, Wis., another rural area, runs Hickory Ridge Limited at http://www.hrltd.com, which also sells rockers, as well as smaller Amish crafts, from several Amish neighbors. "I have found that the Internet has been my best advertising," as customers from across the nation find the site by doing Web searches, she said. The business alone doesn't support the family, she said; her husband works for a public education agency. "It's growing continually but it's not to the point where I'd like it to be yet," said Triphan, who went online about four years ago. Her Amish suppliers, she said, are so busy that they don't really need to seek business over the Web. She thinks they're curious about the medium, however. Said Triphan: "I don't think they can fathom what's actually going on when we say we are advertising it over the Internet." - Dinah Wisenberg Brin (Dow Jones Newswires) |
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