The attacks hit the global travel market

"The story as it unfolded, if considered by film producers, would have been dismissed as totally unbelievable and not suitable for something on a TV or film set," Fergal Foley BL, prosecuting, told Judge Carmel Stewart.

He said the investigation involved "the most amazing piece of police work" in bringing the thief, 48-year-old Martin Ryan, before the court.

Ryan of North William Street, Dublin, pleaded guilty on the morning of his trial at the Circuit Criminal Court to trespass and theft of a quantity of jewellery in Stillorgan, Dublin, on April 21, 2010.

He had 71 previous convictions dating back to 1980, which included burglary and road traffic offences.

Judge Stewart imposed a two-year sentence with the final six months suspended on strict conditions. She also imposed six months of supervision with the probation service.

Garda Michael McCarthy told Mr Foley that a local businesswoman had asked one of her newly appointed staff to return to her Stillorgan home and get her laptop. The young woman was provided with the house keys and codes to the alarm.

She had trouble turning off the alarm and ran out on the street to seek help. She waved down a passing car and asked the driver for assistance.

Mr Foley said the driver of the car, Ryan, "very helpfully" came into the house and deactivated the alarm.

US internet entrepreneur Peter Cobb has some simple advice for anyone thinking of starting their own e-commerce site: do a financial projection then double your expenses and cut your revenue in half. If you still have a profit you probably have a workable business model.

“You can guarantee there’s going to be curve balls,” he says. “There will be obstacles pop up that you can’t even imagine and so you need to build an organisation that is nimble and not afraid of change and can react in a timely manner.”

For Cobb, the founder of online luggage business, the unexpected was the 9/11 terrorist attacks a couple of years after he and his partners started their business. The attacks hit the global travel market hard and hence the demand for luggage. Fortunately, the site had already started moving into everyday items such as brief cases, handbags and backpacks.

“One of the very first things we did, and it wasn’t really done at the time, was customer reviews and testimonials,” says Cobb. Reviews were an innovation when the site launched in 1998 and gave the site a competitive advantage – a factor Cobb says every e-commerce site needs to be successful. The site now has a vast archive of customer reviews – 2.5 million at last count.

Cobb says one of the keys to the site’s success has been its 'drop ship model'.It doesn’t buy, store or even handle any product. Instead, it shows the bag ranges from various manufacturers. When customers order from the site,sends the order to the bag manufacturer, which ships the product direct to the customer.

This means can have 55,000 different styles of bag on its site and better cash flow because it’s not buying stock up front.

The company also changes pricing on its goods as often as every six hours as it responds to prices offered by competitors – something that is not possible for bricks and mortar retailers with physical price tags.

Pinny Gniwisch, another US web entrepreneur who will be appearing at the conference, also cites flexibility as a key to a successful e-commerce site.

“If we weren’t innovative and quick and nimble we wouldn’t have survived,” says Gniwisch, who founded online jewellery retailer. “We changed the tyres as the car was moving and that’s the lesson for a successful online company – that things change so quickly that either you adapt or you die.”

Ice, which turns over around US$40 million per year, has been quick to jump onto the latest communication trends, such as blogging and its own Youtube channel. Most recently it has created an app that lets users take a picture of the finger then see how a ring would look on it.

Gniwisch says entrepreneurs need to understand the language of the web, which is different to the offline world.

“That language is about conversation and the ability to talk to the consumer in a human way – that’s one thing we’ve learned over the years,” he says.

Consumers can talk to the site’s customer services people on Ice’s Facebook page and a shopper can, for instance, send pictures of her daughter’s prom dress and ask for recommendations about jewellery to match. “Our agents are trained in a way so they act more like your best friend who you would go to for advice than a company that is trying to sell you something,” says Gniwisch.