PFSweb has reached an agreement with The Discovery Channel Store Inc. to support Discovery’s merchandising efforts.
Discoverystore.com and the Discovery Channel Store Catalog will receive technology, customer care, fulfillment and services support from PFSweb, which was selected through a competitive bid process. PFSweb will primarily focus on e-commerce, and Discovery will continue to control much of its own catalog activity.
“Discovery clearly sees tremendous growth in the dot-com area,” PFSweb CEO Layton said. “[Discovery] moved away from retail stores over the last year and saw that as not the core competency of what they do, but they wanted to maintain direct to consumer contact through the Web store and rapidly grow that store.”
More than 12 million unique visitors go on Discoverystore.com annually, and consumers also funnel in from affiliate networks and partnerships with Amazon.com and QVC.com. The Discovery catalog is distributed to almost 10 million consumers.
“Catalogs are a tremendous driver for Web activity, so they’re pretty interrelated,” Layton added.
Discovery could not be reached for comment.
Layton said that, when Discovery closed all its retail stores, it wasn’t cost-effective for the company to keep its self-operated distribution facilities just to fulfill online and catalog orders. Thus, Discovery put out an RFP and found PFSweb.
“The clear differentiating factor for PFSweb is our ability to provide flexible, tailored, custom solutions that the client has some control and empowerment over,” Layton said. “When you find clients like Discovery Channel, they’ve spent years and many dollars developing their brand and the identity they want, and it’s important to find a partner that can emulate and stand behind that brand and be consistent with the brand they want.”
PFSweb offers end-to-end support, including Web site creation, hosting, customer care and supply chain services. The company fulfills more than $2.6 billion worth of merchandise annually from clients including Lego, Riverbed, Hewlett-Packard and Xerox.
Discovery Communications owns more then 100 networks worldwide, including Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC and The Science Channel. The company also owns digital media properties such as HowStuffWorks.com.
