Venerable music retailer Tower Records said Wednesday it will expand its global reach by setting up a new Web storefront geared toward European shoppers, in an attempt to surpass competitors like Virgin Records, Amazon.com, CDnow, and N2K's Music Boulevard.
As part of the expansion, Tower, based in Sacramento, California, will use the order-processing and fulfillment services of EIS/MusicNet to offer music and entertainment products in five languages and 150 different currencies.
The European site, which will launch the sales portion in November, eventually will offer Tower's online shoppers 600,000 music, video, and book titles. The site will be viewable in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish, said Eoin MacGlouglin, Tower's online services director.
"The grander picture is to try to be as localized as possible throughout the globe," MacGlouglin said.
Tower Records, one of the biggest glass-and-steel music retailers, faces intense competition from online upstarts. In the bookselling business, established giants like Barnes & Noble (BKS) have been eclipsed in consumers' minds by the likes of Amazon.com (AMZN). To avoid the same fate, Tower is beefing up its online presence to compete against N2K (NTKI), and CDnow (CDNW). Even Amazon is now selling CDs through its site. Earlier this week, US-based CDnow announced its own European expansion, partnering with a distributor that can ship CDs to Europe more quickly and cheaply.
But MacGlouglin said he doesn't expect his company's online expansion to hurt its offline business.
"The new site could bring more sales into the stores," he said. "We are also trying to guide customers to say 'Hey, check out your local Tower store.' The online initiative will enhance the store sales."
Tower would let customers who order through the Web pick up their merchandise at a real-world store, he said. Customers also could return their Web-purchased CDs at outlets worldwide.
