Discovery Seeks New Deliveries For Online Sales
Delivery Agent Will Handle Programmer's E-Commerce Opportunities In Exchange For Royalties
Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 3/16/2009 6:08:43 PM
Discovery has outsourced its e-commerce business to Delivery Agent Inc.
The company, a specialist in working with media companies in their online sales efforts, will oversee all direct-to-consumer operations of Discoverystore.com. The unit brings in an average of 12 million customers a year to its collection of Discovery channel programs, specials and educational toys. Additionally, Delivery Agent will shepherd the launch of new stores for TLC.com and Animal Planet.com, expected later this year.
Under the new business model for Discovery will receive royalties, a much more reliable and inexpensive route than managing the online store internally.
The move marks the content company's push to divorce itself from traditional brick-and-mortar retailing: in 2007. Discovery announced that it would close all of its locations and focus instead on e-commerce.
Delivery Agent counts 125 entertainment properties from major media companies such as ABC, CBS, NBC Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, MTV Networks, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Boston Celtics, UFC and The Weinstein Co. among its online e-commerce clients.
"Transitioning to a royalty model provides opportunity for increased profitability while significantly reducing the financial risk of holding large product inventory," said Discovery Commerce COO Kelly Day in a statement. "Discovery's brand strength and legacy of creating award-winning consumer products, paired with Delivery Agent's track record of building winning commerce solutions for the entertainment industry, makes this an ideal go-forward strategy for achieving our growth goals for commerce."
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