Cool Entertainment, Inc. (?CULE? ? OTC:BB)
Suite 900 10900 NE 8th Street Bellevue, Washington 98004
Phone: (425) 688 - 2997 Investor Relations: (888) 603 - 8833
Website: coolentertainment.com
An entertainment-focused, e-commerce website featuring the world?s most comprehensive selection of audio CDs, DVDs, videos and video games
New site (with digital downloading capabilities) to be launched on June 1st;
A major marketing program to promote the site is planned for 3Q & 4Q 2000
COOL ENTERTAINMENT ? POISED TO BECOME THE
LEADING INTERNET RETAILER OF ENTERTAINMENT AUDIO & VIDEO PRODUCTS
Cool Entertainment, Inc. (OTCBB: CULE) is an entertainment retail website(www.CoolEntertainment.com) that currently offers over 250,000 products, including CDs, DVDs, Videos and Video games, as well as value-added services such as online games, free e-mail accounts, and entertainment industry news.
Cool Entertainment?s goal is to provide an easy-to-use and enjoyable, first-class site to consumers in North America and, eventually, the rest of the world. Although the company is still in the early stages of developing its e-commerce capabilities, we believe that it has an opportunity to position itself as a dominant player in the entertainment retail business. Beginning with a new and vastly-enhanced website / e-commerce store (due to be launched on June 1st), Cool Entertainment will begin challenging companies such as CDnow (Nasdaq:CDNW), N2K (Nasdaq:NTKI) and Amazon.com (Nasdaq:AMZN).
Cool Entertainment launched its current beta site on January 26th. The site is currently accepting on-line transactions in conjunction with distribution partner Valley Media and content provider Muze, Inc. Vastly expanded content along with real-time digital downloading, custom cd compilations and imported music sections will be introduced on June 1st when the complete CoolEntertainment.com website will be officially launched in conjunction with a major marketing campaign in the United States.
Part of the attraction of CoolEntertainment.com to date has been COOL?s first on-line interactive game series: "The Adventures of Pengui", which is a pilot of the on-line entertainment components the company will be providing. To further enhance the website, COOL recently signed an agreement with ScreamingMedia.com to provide film, music, and game and entertainment news on a daily basis. According to Forrester Research, high-quality content is the main reason that users return to their favorite sites, and the agreement with ScreamingMedia will provide COOL with the type of content that its users are seeking.
Right now, the Company is focused on enhancing its existing beta site with more customization and other original content. Cool Entertainment plans to be a one-stop Internet shopping site for all entertainment products. In just a few weeks, customers will be able to purchase products and download them in a digital format right onto their own computers, or elect to have purchases shipped directly to their doorstep in three business days or less.
Because of its strategic alliances and distribution agreements with Valley Media, MSI Music and Astral Communications, COOL will not be burdened with constructing expensive ?bricks & mortar? warehouses to store inventory, nor will it face the huge inventory costs that burden other e-tailers. When a sale is made on COOLs website, the order is instantly transmitted to one of CoolEntertainment.com?s distributors, and the product is immediately shipped. For investors, this means that COOL will not have to raise tens or hundreds of millions of dollars for physical warehouses ? rather, it can concentrate on raising more modest amounts of money for marketing its site and building brand recognition among consumers.
Cool Entertainment intends to target consumers between the ages of 18 and 49. This market segment also contains a large number of entry-level income earners whose single purchases will be of smaller dollar values, precisely where COOL?s product line is positioned. Cool Entertainment believes that it has a distinct competitive advantage because of its pricing structure, which, combined with the site?s variety, convenience, affordability and speed of delivery, is designed to gain the confidence of the consumer.
COOLENTERTAINMENT.COM ULE OFFERS A MUCH BIGGER SELECTION OF MUSIC THAN AMAZON.COM AND A FAR GREATER RANGE OF PRODUCTS THAN CDnow
We believe that one of COOL?s hidden strengths is the scope and breadth of its music selections. While every major Internet music retailer offers the most popular current music, we are not aware of any other site that has such a far-reaching selection of audio products.
Try searching for some early Patsy Cline, King Crimson, or Grateful Dead music on one of the mainstream sites, and odds are, you either won?t find it or you?ll see a note saying that is a ?special order? item and that it will take weeks for it to arrive. Not so with COOL ? they have all this music, in stock, and can generally deliver it anywhere in the U.S. within three business days.
Another big difference that we believe will set CoolEntertainment.com apart from Amazon.com and others is that consumers will be able to preview every track on most CDs offered by COOL. That?s about 1.4 million tracks. Compare that to companies like Amazon.com, where you can generally only preview 2 or 3 tracks before deciding to buy.
Compared to Cdnow and other big Internet retailers that only offer audio products,CoolEntertainment.com features a full line of DVDs, videos, video games, and a full compliment of audio products in a one stop shopping environment.
Additionally, CoolEntertainment.com is on its way to becoming an entertainment event in its own right. Its daily feed of film, music, game and entertainment news from ScreamingMedia.com should generate heavy traffic to the web site and provide people with a reason to come to the site each day, rather than when they are simply interested in making purchases.
COOL?s NEW WEB SITE WILL BE LAUNCHED ON JUNE 1st
SUPPORTED BY A MAJOR MARKETING CAMPAIGN IN THE U.S.
Cool Entertainment plans to launch its new and greatly-enhanced entertainment retail web site on June 1st at which time customers will be able to purchase the full line of over 550,000 products. COOL anticipates beginning the marketing campaign for the new site in June and are in the process of raising several million dollars for marketing the new site throughout the United States during the remainder of the year.
During the summer and fall, COOL plans to enter the Canadian markets; a separate marketing campaign will promote CoolEntertainment.com as the ?Premier Worldwide Destination on the Internet for Entertainment Product and Information?. Longer-term, the company intends to expand into the European, Asian and Latin American markets.
OVER 1,400,000 MUSIC TRACKS CAN NOW BE PREVIEWED AT COOL?s WEBSITE !!
In February 2000, COOL announced the release of Cool Audio Previews using Liquid Audio, Inc., (NASDAQ: LQID) a leading provider of software and services for the Internet delivery of music.
With over 1,400,000 audio tracks for users to preview, streaming music previews are freely downloadable through Liquid Audio, which provides top quality sound at low and high bandwidths. Using COOL?s Audio Player, fans can sample music and obtain other information about the track or CD that they are sampling. An easily downloaded Liquid Plug-in will allow the Liquid? Previews.
In a recent market research study conducted by BizRate.com (November 1999), consumers said that they consider online product previewing as significant as the core data about the product when making purchase decisions. Enabling customers to "try it before buying it" should increase Cool?s revenues by attracting more customers and closing a higher percentage of sales.
Cool Entertainment is looking forward to enhancing their music previews by eventually enabling the user to purchase single and downloadable audio tracks. "We're very excited to add streaming music previews to the Cool Entertainment site," says Clement Lau, President of Cool Entertainment. ?This is part of our ongoing commitment to enhance the Web site with more customization and interactive features.?
COOLENTERTAINMENT.COM WILL OFFER DIGITAL DOWNLOADS BY JUNE 1ST
COOL has entered into an agreement with Amplified.com (www.amplified.com), the world's leading online business-to-business fulfillment service for music and video products. Per the terms of the agreement, Amplified.com will be providing Cool Entertainment with thousands of licensed digital music tracks, digital rights management and the digital media technology required to deliver both digital downloads and custom compilations to Cool Entertainment's users.
Amplified.com is the world's leading business-to-business online fulfillment company for entertainment products, and provides digital downloads and custom CDs to most of the Internet's leading retail sites.
"We understand clearly that digital downloading of music will play a large role in what we plan to do. Once implemented we will be in the same market with companies like MP3.com (Nasdaq:MPPP), Musicmaker.com (Nasdaq:HITS), CDNow (Nasdaq:CDNW), and Liquid Audio (Nasdaq:LQID)" says Clement Lau, Cool?s President.
Three years ago, Internet music sales totaled just US$47 million. Market Tracking International (MTI) has released a study showing that Internet music sales should reach US$3.3 billion by the year 2004.
With the exponential growth and explosion of music and video e-commerce, COOL?s management believes that Cool Entertainment has tremendous growth potential both in the U.S. and internationally.
With its new e-commerce / entertainment site, state of the art digital downloading technology and perhaps the largest music and video catalog available anywhere in the world, COOL expects to become a significant player in this rapidly-growing market. The key to COOL?s success, we believe, lies in their strong relationships with the world?s major audio and video media distributors.
Cool?s new site will provide great opportunities for merchandising, advertising, original music and entertainment content, and has the potential to evolve into a true media download source for immediate viewing on the screen through the successful merging of online technology with original media content.
According to Infobeads Research, more than 67 million PC's are equipped and ready to download music from the Internet, a market that CoolEntertainment.com will begin serving in just a few weeks.
RECENTLY-ANNOUNCED EUROPEAN DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT ADDS 100,000
INTERNATIONAL TITLES TO COOL?s EXTENSIVE ONLINE MUSIC & VIDEO SELECTIONS
Just a few weeks ago, COOL announced that it had signed an agreement with MSI Music
(http://www.msimusic.com) to serve as the Company's distribution partner in Europe. MSI distributes 300,000 titles in Europe through its Depot 31 warehouse.Cool Entertainment will also use MSI's Miami warehouse to distribute imported products throughout the United States.
Clement Lau, President of Cool Entertainment, notes that, ?this agreement establishes Cool Entertainment as an international player in online sales of music and entertainment products. We can now offer online shoppers over 100,000 international titles stocked by MSI. This is in addition to the 250,000 products, including CDs, DVDs, videos and video games, that Cool Entertainment currently offers.'' Cool Entertainment currently has a similar agreement with Valley Media for North American distribution.
Rolf Hansen, VP of operations for MSI, stated, ``MSI and Depot 31's combined experience in drop shipping for Internet vendors CDnow, Amazon.com and Tower Records will undoubtedly benefit Cool Entertainment.''
COOL ENTERTAINMENT?s SHARE STRUCTURE & RECENT TRADING RANGE
Total Shares Outstanding (@ 12-31-99): 36,218,863
Restricted Shares Held By Management: 23,184,044
Public Float: ~ 13 million shares
Recent Trading Range: US$0.19 (low) by US$1.03 (high)
Last Trade (May 4, 2000): US$0.44
Cool Entertainment received SEC approval as a fully-reporting company on February 9, 2000. We understand that the company will be seeking a full NASDAQ listing in the future once the listing requirements have been met. Presently, COOL has minimal debt, and about US$500,000 in working capital. We understand that the Company is in the process of raising several million dollars for marketing the expanded and greatly-enhanced CoolEntertainment.com website.
For investors seeking additional information on the Company, COOL?s discussion threads on Raging Bull and SI can be accessed at ragingbull.com and Subject 26201, respectively.
For more information, please contact:
Investor Relations
Toll-Free: (888) 603 - 8833 E-mail: info@coolent.net |
