Last week I took a train ride to Darien, Connecticut, an affluent suburb that provides an hour-long commute for business executives who work in New York city.

It's a residential town and an unlikely location for the headquarters of an Internet start-up. But, that's where Priceline.com decided to move last December when it outgrew its office space in Stamford.

Priceline is a consumer website that has a "name your own price" strategy on groceries, hotel rooms, petrol, airline tickets, rental cars, new cars, long distance calling time and mortgages.

Although, like many Internet companies, it has yet to turn a profit, it has hired a top management team and it is using the skills of William Shatner, well known as Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek series, as its celebrity spokesman.

In Priceline's television advertisements, he croons ballads in a smoky night club. And in the process, he has helped build Priceline's brand to the point that more than half of all US adults have heard of it.

Priceline has become one of the most recognised electronic commerce brands, together with Amazon.com, Yahoo! and AOL. In return, Mr Shatner has been given plenty of stock options.

Priceline was founded by Jay Walker in June 1997. In addition to his role as vice-chairman, Mr Walker is chairman of Walker Digital, an intellectual property laboratory that invented Priceline's business model. Mr Walker guided the company through three rounds of financing before its initial public offering in March 1999.

Unlike eBay, which never patented its auction model, Mr Walker has already received approval for 25 patents and a further 225 patents are pending. He was instrumental in patenting Priceline's Internet pricing system that allows consumers to save money when buying a wide range of goods and services, while enabling sellers to generate more revenue.

"It's a transaction site," said Mr Ben Ness, senior vice-president of financial services at Priceline.

"People come here to transact online. They know the marketplace value and we can beat it by several hundred or thousand dollars."

The first industry Priceline chose to price was leisure airline tickets. Its concept: to sell off cheap airline seats - US airlines fly with 500,000 empty seats every day - and so help fill the planes.

This wasn't an easy market to break into until Priceline signed Delta in 1998 by offering it a stake in the company. It then began to offer other airlines similar stock incentives. Now, all eight major United States airlines, as well as over 20 brand name international carriers, work with Priceline.

On day one, it sold 24 airline tickets; now it sells nearly 120,000 airline tickets a week, making it its top selling business, followed by its hotel service, which sold 432,500 room nights during the second quarter, and the rental car service, which sold over 429,600 rental car days.

Second-quarter revenues were $352 million (€388 million), up 216 per cent from second-quarter 1999. The long distance calling time business is also growing rapidly. "We're known for great savings on multiple products," Mr Ness said. On its website, Priceline first asks consumers to be flexible about brands, sellers and product features. The consumer then makes an offer for a product, say, $350 for a round trip plane ticket to Paris from New York.

His offer needs to be guaranteed by a credit card before he can take any further steps. He doesn't know what airline he'll be travelling with, how many stopovers he'll have, or even what time of day he'll be leaving.

Priceline communicates his price directly to its participating sellers or to their private databases. The seller has already told Priceline what minimum price he is willing to accept.

Then, Priceline comes back to the consumer with an offer. Once fulfilled, orders cannot be cancelled.

Priceline asks that consumers put their initials on all the rules and restrictions accompanying each purchase, thus protecting itself from liability. Priceline makes its money by creaming a cut from each transaction. Although Priceline has a two year head-start, six major airlines have invested in a website called Hotwire.com. When it goes live this autumn, it will compete with Priceline to sell unused airline seats.

Unlike Priceline, though, Hotwire will set prices rather than accept the lowest price offered. As with Priceline, the identity of the carrier, the precise timing and routing, whether non-stop or connecting, will be concealed until purchase. On news of the Hotwire announcement in June, Priceline's shares fell 8.4 per cent. Priceline has set itself a target of $1 billion in revenues for this year, its second full year of operation. Its total customer base stands at 6.8 million and it hopes that will reach 10 million by yearend. Thirty-nine per cent of its business comes from repeat customers, up from 26 per cent in second-quarter 1999.

In the financial services space, Priceline has been offering mortgages since January 1999. Its Jacksonville, Florida subsidiary, PricelineMortgage, offers home mortgages, refinancing and home equity loans through Alliance Partners' thrift charter. It allows shoppers to name their own terms and lock in those rates within 24 hours.

Earlier this month, it announced it was forming a joint venture with W.R. Berkley, a property casualty insurance holding company, to form Priceline.com Auto Insurance Agency, a venture that plans to offer car owners name your own price car insurance. Its aim will be to help consumers save money on their car insurance bills and to help participating insurers to attract new customers. American consumers pay more than $110 billion a year in car insurance premiums.

Still to come are term life insurance in September and cobranded credit cards.

This year the company has made four international moves. The first of these was announced in January when Priceline formed an alliance with Hutchison Whampoa to form priceline.com in Asia.

Then, in Feburary, it said it would create a new company called MyPrice in Australia and New Zealand. In June, Priceline and General Atlantic Partners announced the formation of Priceline.com Europe.

It plans to begin offering name your price services for leisure airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars and long distance telephone calling in the fourth quarter of this year.

Mr Dennis Malamatinas, who is currently director of Diageo and chief executive of Burger King, will join Priceline.com Europe on September 1st as president and chief executive. In addition, Mr Walker has set up two brand new companies: Priceline WebHouse Club offers name your price services on groceries, which enable customers to then pay those prices at 1,100 participating super markets.

It also offers petrol. For example, when buying petrol a consumer tells Priceline how much he is willing to pay for a certain number of gallons, then he gives it his credit card number in advance.

If it accepts his offer, it immediately charges his credit card and sends him a petrol card preloaded with that amount.

With the card, the consumer then goes to a nearby petrol station and ignores the price at the pump. More than 750,000 households now use WebHouse Club services.

The other company Mr Walker founded is Priceline Perfect YardSale, a buying and selling system for used household items.

There is one drawback, however, to having a pure Internet site - customer frustration. A large number of customer complaints have been logged with various regulatory bodies about Priceline.

Priceline, in turn, has increased its number of customer service representatives to 650. It offers customers the option of contacting the company by email, telephone or online chat.