The Sharper Image has opened a section on its Web site featuring products from more than 80 e-commerce merchants.
Affiliates featured in the section, called the galleria, include Dell Computer, Office Depot, Gap, J.Crew and FTD.com. Consumers who click through and buy items from the affiliates will receive 5 percent of the purchase price in Sharper Image dollars. Sharper Image dollars can be used for orders placed at the company's Web site, through its catalog or in its retail stores.
The Sharper Image will receive a percentage of revenue from purchases made on affiliate sites. Specific terms of the revenue sharing agreement were not disclosed.
Kathryn Grant, director of public and investor relations at The Sharper Image, said the sales commission could be a dollar figure — $1 per item, for example — or a percentage, ranging from 1 percent to 9 percent. She said the program will run indefinitely.
The company, she added, previously participated in a marketing affiliation program with LinkShare, New York, in which it received traffic from affiliate Web sites and paid a commission per sale.
The Sharper Image has set monetary and Web traffic goals for the program that could not be disclosed, Grant said.
The Sharper Image began notifying its customers in late June about the promotion via opt-in e-mails, she said. The company, which sends three to four promotional e-mails per month, has included information about the galleria within the e-mails, she said.
