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To: GST who wrote (78868)	9/29/1999 9:25:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

BertelsmannBTGGga.Flaunches Swiss online service By Marcel Michelson ZURICH, 29 Sept (Reuters) - German publishing group Bertelsmann BTGGga.F on Wednesday launched its BOL online service in Switzerland, its sixth in Europe this year in a bid to dethrone Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O. Competition, now heating up for Internet sales of books, will soon encompass music, video and software. Klaus Eierhoff, executive board member of Bertelsmann AG and head of the group's multimedia activities, told a news conference the BOL service would start selling music in November this year in its four biggest European markets so far -- Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands. BOL recently opened a virtual shop for Spanish net surfers and will soon start in Italy, he said, adding Japan, China, South Korea and south American countries were next on the list. Bertelsmann already owns 50 percent of Barnes & Noble in the United States. The BOL Swiss site is housed on the international home page at www.bol.com but will soon also be accessible through www.bol.ch, a German language site with a link to France for French-speaking Swiss surfers, and offers 23,000 book titles deliverable within two days. Reflecting Swiss reluctance to pay by credit card on the Internet is the facility to pay a bill upon delivery. "Europe is running two years behind the U.S. but we are sure Europe will grow quicker than the U.S.," Eierhoff said, adding Bertelsmann wanted to be the leading pan-European e-commerce site and in the medium-term the leading international site. Heinz Wermelinger, president and chief executive of BOL International, said that BOL was operating in its markets with local management and a local offering while the "big competitor with an A" was mainly active in other countries with an international approach. BOL will offer music, trade journals, videos, software and later travel on its sites. Books and music already account for more than 35 percent of online transactions. Orell Fuessli and Buecher.ch are already active on the Swiss online market while Amazon.de also attracts Swiss buyers. Martin Luetscher of BOL Schweiz said the group had concluded traffic agreements - deals with other sites and portals to refer surfers to BOL -- in Switzerland with a total potential of 60 million page views and was still adding to the list. Germany is Europe's biggest e-commerce market at the moment, with 1998 sales of 344 million Swiss francs ($226.2 million). Sales are seen rising to 6.1 billion in 2002. For Switzerland, sales are seen at 32 million francs in 1998 and are expected to rise to 469 million in 2002. ($1=1.521 Swiss Franc) REUTERS Rtr 07:07 09-29-99 Copyright 1999, Reuters News Service REUTERS Rtr 07:09 09-29-99 Copyright 1999, Reuters News Service