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Milestones in the development of e-business are hard to spot. But the this month's launch of Umbro.com might well be one.

Like boo.com, Umbro.com is trying to offer a global online sportswear retail service, launching in a multitude of countries simultaneously.

But while boo tried and failed to build such a business from scratch, Umbro.com is seeking to launch on the back of an established operation.

The similarity with the boo project is the size of the challenge being faced. But 76-year old Umbro has a well-recognised brand focused on football, a network of more than 50 licensees in around 100 markets, promotional deals in place with 760 endorsers (coaches, players, teams, and leagues), and a well-tested design and manufacturing operation.

It is a simple difference, but a crucial one, and it explains how things have moved on in the months between boo's launch and Umbro.com's, with the current wisdom being that a bricks and clicks model such as Umbro's is needed to make such a large undertaking succeed.

"Boo was being very ambitious like us, but we are a different type of company. We already have a strong brand, an international network, a massive audience and a clear focus on one niche," says Umbro.com head of marketing Paul Holland, who was marketing manager at 365 Corporation before joining the new operation in April.

"Launching globally does create a few problems for us in terms of marketing," he continues. "You need content targeted at a global audience, and fulfilment systems designed for each country. But we are launching all over the world at once because, as part of a global network, we can."

Umbro.com is not a complete newcomer like boo, but it is not wholly integrated into the Manchester-based football kit manufacturer. The online operation is a new and separate company with 25 staff. Half of them work on the IT and design side, around a quarter work in customer services, two work on content and two hold managerial positions.

Umbro decided that, because of the different skills required in running an e-tail business as compared to a manufacturer, the new company should be independent. Hence, Umbro.com is a private company which has simply paid an undisclosed fee for the rights to sell its goods online, although it does hold some shareholders in common with Umbro.

"People at Umbro realised that an online venture needs to be separate from the core company because it is a completely different kind of business.

The company has been designing sportswear for more than 70 years and running as a large b2b organisation. Running a consumer web site is completely different," says Holland.

The relationship between the online business and the main company is central to the challenge facing Umbro.com. It is symbiotic - while Umbro makes the goods that Umbro.com is selling, a crucial part of Umbro.com's purpose is to help develop the shared brand.

As Holland puts it: "Umbro is completely focused on football. What Umbro.com is doing is trying to convey this brand message as well as being a direct channel for selling to consumers."

Umbro.com will focus on marketing Umbro to young people, adding a youth and technology slant to the brand. Holland says that commercial messages like these can be hard to explain in conventional advertising, but will fit well in an online context.

Co-operation with the main company is complicated by Umbro's structure and its relationship with licencees which manufacture and sell kits locally.

It has around 50 independent business licensees, all making different kit for their local market, carrying the Umbro brand. Umbro, which has never sold directly to consumers before, must tread carefully if it is not to upset its channel partners or licencees which might lose business to the online operation.

To guard against this, Umbro.com will not run any offers which undercut those in local markets. Local licencees will also get a cut of any profit made online in their market.

"It is important for us not to undercut local companies. The goal is not to cannibalise the existing market, but to grow it. Every time people buy from Umbro.com, the local companies will get a cut," says Holland.

In return, the local companies help promote Umbro.com with its web address appearing in all advertising.

The arrangement Umbro.com has with Umbro gives the new company the rights to sell kit over the net from its site. There are no plans, however, for aggressively trying to maintain online exclusivity.

The site was originally designed by Razorfish, which worked on it for six months. After this time, however, Umbro.com decided to bring it in-house.

The site was still under development right up until the hard launch on 9 October, but had been live on an experimental basis for some months before that, even being used to sell this season's new Manchester United shirts all over the world.

Holland says the site changed considerably during testing over the summer.

The main difference is that it moved considerably away from corporate branding and a sales focus, towards a content-richness that the company hopes will make it a regular destination for large numbers of football fans worldwide. The idea is to produce an entertaining site which will enhance Umbro's credibility, and from which customers can also buy sportswear.

Holland says: "We wanted a flexible design. What is important is the balance between content and commerce. We wanted to give out a corporate message without being too boring. We have moved the site more towards a content focus since testing began at the start of the summer."

"Razorfish is not working on the site anymore, as we felt the need to take complete control. Around 90 per cent of what you see now was done internally. When we came to understand how critical it was to have content updated several times a week, we realised that we needed the site to be in-house," he adds.

The content Umbro.com has added includes news, views and features about football from around the world. The site will also feature exclusive contributions and footage from the players and teams that Umbro sponsors. The company has built its enviable position in the football industry on the back of sponsorship deals with teams such as Manchester United, Chelsea and England, and although the company has recently lost the Manchester United deal to Nike, it still has access to a lot of talent.

To position the content, Umbro.com has decided to use "virtual journalists".

Instead of publishing real by-lines, it credits six invented journalists as the authors of the material.

Holland says that putting everything under the names of virtual journalists - a woman does most of the North American news and a South American-sounding fellow who writes items from that continent - helps to give coherence to the site, much of which is written by freelancers.

"With freelancers, you get lots of different styles. This is a way of creating some commonality," explains Holland. "It is also a way of creating a community within the site. They all have their own characters and little pictures. People even ask the female journalist out."

Because Umbro has strong businesses in European countries such as France and also in the US, China and Brazil, the editorial challenge for the content team is to find stories that will attract customers from all of these markets, not just the UK one.

In the week before its launch, stories included one about the French squad for a friendly game against South Africa, one about a new coach for Italian team Inter Milan, and a vote was being held about who should make up the attack for the England match against Germany.

The risk for Umbro.com is that in trying to interest football fans from all over the world, there is a danger that the content will be too diluted to make the site really sticky for any group of fans.

Aside from the editorial content and selling kit, the site has another major function - that of gathering information on behalf of the main company about its audience.As Holland explains, Umbro has previously had little way to get consumer feedback and the web site offers a major new opportunity.

"Umbro has always been a b2b company, so in the past, there has been no feedback from consumers. It is a problem that many companies have. Even Coca-Cola does not have direct relationships with consumers. This makes it difficult to know what consumers want. With the web site, Umbro has real access to its customers, and will be building a profile of consumers for the first time. We will be trying to collect as many different pieces of information as possible. We will collect little bits at a time and then use correlation techniques to make the customer profiles complete."

Holland did not want to say too much about these plans, but commented that this would initially involve collecting psychographic data about Umbro customers' attitude to football.

Umbro.com's approach means that the actual "sales area" on the site is not overbearing. It consists of a single panel on the right-hand side of the home page. Surfers who do visit the sales area are offered a choice of goods, some of which will be available on the high street and some which will not. Where the goods are available locally, they will be sold online for the same price, although Umbro admits margins will be higher online.

Most of the goods available will be those produced in the UK, but in cases where there is an Umbro product made by a local licensee in another country which Umbro.com believes has global appeal, this could be offered too.

"We are going to offer products that are not always available on the high street. For example, there could be nice Umbro leather jackets from China. If products like these give out the right brand message, then we can sell them globally. In the shirt market, there are a number of companies that do cool shirts for local clubs that are not available everywhere and we could sell these too," says Holland.

Despite its international feel and aspiration, the site is currently available only in English. But there are plans to introduce two more languages by the end of the year.

The most complex part of the Umbro.com arrangement is the fulfilment.

It is entirely new to the company so it has recruited an executive from United Parcel Services to set the operation up.

Holland says: "Fulfilment is the difficult part. For example, import taxes can make up to 80 per cent of the price in some places. You have to be sure that the consumer does not end up with a bill which was not mentioned on the web site. What we are doing now is fairly simple, but it will get more complicated."

The fulfilment set-up is described by the company as being fairly standard. It involves big courier companies, which handle the main worldwide deliveries, and warehouses rented in a centrally-located facility. There is also a team of customer service people who guide customers through the purchasing process.

But Holland admits that the current fulfilment system has its weaknesses.

"At the moment, we send everything globally from the UK. Maybe in the future we will need to do something in order to avoid a shirt that has been ordered from the US coming over here to the UK fulfilment operation and then going back to the US for delivery," he says.

As far as procurement is concerned, Umbro.com is able to take advantage of the network which already exists between the different Umbro licensees and the UK operation for the purpose. "The beauty of it is that all the procurement systems are already set up and have been going for years. We can just step into the network," says Holland.

The final piece in the Umbro.com jigsaw is getting the brand known. This will be achieved with a mix of online marketing, for which Holland says he has a large budget, and offline marketing, as part of existing Umbro activity.

The marketing initiatives will be themed around the future of football, and will be designed to position the company at the cutting edge of technical developments in sportswear manufacture.

Holland is aware that it is essential to co-ordinate the online and offline marketing messages. Umbro.com is expecting its brand to be carried on perimeter fencing as part of existing deals (although nothing was visible during the England-Germany game at Wembley). The brand is also expected to be incorporated into all the other commercial messages put out by the parent company.

"We'll work closely with Umbro so that the web address appears on everything," says Holland. "There will also be a big online campaign for Umbro.com.

We have a multi-million pound budget for driving traffic to web sites with a variety of online marketing instruments. We have a number of initiatives planned to get the message across that Umbro.com brings football to your home - all focused on the youth market."

Online marketing plans include viral campaigns and banner advertising, but the company is more interested in sponsorship arrangements. It is seeking to make arrangements with other sites to which it can supply branded football content and a link back to the Umbro.com site. The site is already sponsoring the live scores section of a couple of sites.

Holland says that the company will monitor how well these arrangements work in terms of generating traffic and will develop those that are most productive.

The marketing activity, the company hopes, will make the site one of the most popular for football content. The company is unwilling to reveal details of its targets for the business, but Holland is confident. "It is going to be really big. Within no time at all it will be one of the biggest football portals," he predicts.

There are further opportunities for the future. The company has digital rights for the Umbro brand and is aware of the potential of WAP and iTV. It is not in a hurry to develop these, however, deciding probably wisely that demonstrating how to run a successful global online sportswear retailer is enough of a challenge for the time being.