For a marriage seemingly made in heaven, try fnac.com, the online auxiliary of the FNAC bricks-and-mortar 50-store chain selling books, music and electronics--including all the equipment you need to click on to fnac.com. Apparently, 50% of FNAC members--card-carrying customers who benefit from special discounts--are already regular users of the Net, while Le Monde reports the results of a survey indicating that 85% of France's Net practitioners also buy at FNAC stores.
For online book sales, FNAC had earlier launched fnac.fr, absorbing an existing online bookseller called Alibabook; it claimed market leadership in France. Competitors on the book side include the Bertelsmann-Havas bol.fr, the French counterpart of the Bertelsmann/Barnes & Noble online partnership, which is linked to bn.com and other existing Bertelsmann e-commerce operations.
