CD WOW!

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CDWOW!
Type Private
Founded London, England
Headquarters Worldwide
Industry Retail
Record store
Ecommerce
Products Recorded music, videos, DVDs, books, computer games, beauty
Website www.cdwow.com [2]

CD WOW! is an online retailer, offering Games, CD, DVD, Books and Cosmetics. Similar to Amazon.com, it offers websites in and ships from multiple countries including: UK, USA, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Republic of Ireland, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Japan and Germany. Started in 2000 by MTOL HK Ltd. 'CD WOW!' was bought by Stomp HK Ltd in September 2007.

Contents

[edit] History

The retailer made a name for itself in 2000 when it began operating in the UK and offered CDs and DVDs at lower prices than the high street. Because of CDWOW'S price position they were taken to court by the British Phonographic Industry, the recording industry association for the UK, for selling CDs at prices that often undercut UK retail prices by 25%. Although the CDs in question were legal, many of them were licensed for sale and distribution in other markets and thus priced accordingly for those markets.

The BPI, under severe pressure from the high street stores, saw the lower priced albums as damaging to the UK and European markets and took the company's former owners Music Trading On-Line (HK) Ltd to High Court citing UK's Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. This resulted in CD WOW! having to increase the price of all CDs by £1 at the time, citing legal costs as the reason why they decided not to take the case to court. They are still operating their low cost operation and still offering lower priced CDs and DVDs than the high street stores.

On 29 May 2007, the former owners of CD WOW! were ordered by the High Court to pay £41 million in damages to the BPI for breaching a 2004 agreement over the sale of imported CDs. The damages awarded to the BPI are still outstanding and they are appealing the decision.

Since September 1st, 2007 the retailer has been under new ownership and launched a complete new front end. The change of ownership has allowed major changes to be made to the operation of the website(s) and institute a program of improvement to reverse a lack of investment caused by the BPI case.

In May 2008, CD WOW! launched a new site design in the UK, Ireland and the US, and changed its domain name from 'cd-wow.com' to 'cdwow.com'. The site was redesigned, but the overall navigation was kept. Customer accounts on the old site were migrated to the new site.

As of September 2008 CD Wow has launched the new front end into all the domains including a new domain in the Netherlands and is offering cosmetics and perfumes on all the sites via its Wowwoman.com domain.

[edit] Tax Problems

Lately, several customers from Denmark have complained that their orders from CDWow has been taxed with several hundres DKK, and that this was not mentioned anywhere on the CDWow website[1]

[edit] External links

[edit] CD WOW! Websites


[edit] References

  1. ^ [1]Sol.dk debate in Danish where several users complains about delevery and taxation
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