Altura International, operator of Catalog City, and CyberDrawer have partnered to launch Catalog King, an online shopping portal featuring the merchandise of 500 catalog retailers.
The site, www.catalogking.com, lists 500,000 products and uses CyberDrawer's marketing technology, which lets shoppers save offers, even if they don't wish to buy immediately, Dallas-based CyberDrawer said. They later can retrieve offers they have saved by accessing their personalized account page.
Visually, Catalog City and Catalog King are nearly identical. The two sites also carry essentially the same products and offers from catalog vendors.
That's no coincidence, said Bruce Sellers, spokesman at Altura International, Monterey, CA. Altura provided the content for Catalog King, and its catalog partners are featured on the site.
The new site will increase the number of people who see the products offered by Altura's catalog partners, which should boost sales and Altura's profits, he said.
Catalogers featured on Catalog City and Catalog King handle their own billing and fulfillment. Altura connects the buyer with the seller, a service for which it receives part of the proceeds.
For sales on the Catalog King site, CyberDrawer will receive a cut as well. There are no plans to use CyberDrawer's technology with Catalog City, though such a partnership would be possible in the future.
“Our job is to help our catalog partners win on the Web,” Sellers said. “Catalog King is just another way to increase their exposure.”
Altura hosts the site and provides its shopping-cart solution. Altura's cataloger partners in the project include The Sharper Image, Hammacher Schlemmer, Harry and David and Ross Simons.
Altura also has developed e-commerce sites for Quixtar, Tupperware, CBS Sportsline and others.
CyberDrawer, a developer of Internet marketing tools, has been in business since January 2000.
