Bing Lee brings in competition for Catalogue Central with ShopLocal

Stephen Withers
Friday, 13 June 2008 12:33

Business IT - Networking

Catalogue Central seemed to have Australian electronic catalogue distribution sewn up with big name clients including Officeworks, Dick Smith, and Big W. But New South Wales electronics retailer has thrown open the market by choosing to become ShopLocal's first client outside North America.

Bing Lee's new relationship with ShopLocal provides it with a mechanism for making print catalogues - you know, the ones that you stopped getting after putting that 'No Junk Mail' sign on your mailbox - available on the web.

Owned by a trio of newspaper publishing companies, ShopLocal delivers localised retail promotions from stores such as Target, Best Buy, Sears and Home Depot, as well as providing comparison shopping facilities to newspaper, directory and shopping sites in the US.

"We are excited that Bing Lee has chosen ShopLocal to post Bing Lee's first interactive print catalogue online for their many shoppers," said Vikram Sharma, CEO of ShopLocal.

"Studies have shown that consumers are increasingly using the Internet to research the latest deals before they shop at their local store while spending less and we are pleased to participate in Bing Lee's first venture and our first client outside of North America."

Both Catalogue Central and ShopLocal catalogues closely replicate the paper catalogues closely, complete with page-turning animation. The main difference seems to be that Catalogue Central only provides the ability to zoom in for a closer look at the page, while ShopLocal provides tooltip style mouseovers giving some additional information, and clicking on an item opens a conventionally-styled web page with full product details.