CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - January 14, 2002 - Endeca, creator of Guided Navigation solutions, today announced that Tower Records, the world's leading retailer of packaged entertainment, has selected Endeca InFront to provide search, navigation and dynamic merchandising across its online retail sites. Tower currently uses Endeca InFront, powered by the Endeca Navigation Engine, in its online video/DVD store and has expanded its deployment to both Tower's Music and Classical stores, enabling shoppers to easily find what they're looking for in a manner customized to their own unique shopping styles. In addition, Endeca InFront offers Tower the ability to merchandise new, relevant purchase options while providing exposure to “bargains” and sometimes missed “back-catalog” items. These capabilities have helped Tower enhance consumers' shopping experience and raise gross margins and conversion rates – ultimately resulting in increased top-line revenue.
In just over four months, Endeca InFront has dramatically increased customer satisfaction on Tower's online video/DVD store. In a recent online customer satisfaction survey, 86% of shoppers surveyed ranked the powered by Endeca site as an “8” or above on a scale of ten for improvement. “The incredible success we've experienced – from both a business and customer satisfaction standpoint – by using Endeca InFront in our DVD store made it compelling to extend to our Music and Classical stores,” said Mark Bressler, Managing Director, Tower Direct. "Endeca's Guided Navigation technology is the best we've seen in its ability to present our catalog of more than 500,000 different titles in an organized way so that our customers can quickly and easily find merchandise and make purchases."
Endeca InFront also enables customers to browse through Tower's site to discover new merchandise, back-catalog items and specially priced promotional items. In the short time the new Music and Classical stores have been live with Endeca InFront, customers are already noticing a difference. "If I don't find what I'm looking for in a few minutes on a web site, I usually give up," said Amy Kidwell, online consumer. "Tower's new site made it easy for me to not just find everything I wanted, but I also discovered a few new titles I didn't realize they carried, plus I found a great deal on a newly-released CD."
Customer satisfaction with at the video/DVD store has translated into direct financial benefits for Tower. "Our deployment of Endeca InFront helped us achieve profitability in 2001 and contributed greatly to our ability to deliver on our goal of better overall customer satisfaction." added Bressler.
Over a 16-week period beginning July 1, 2001, Endeca InFront yielded dramatic, positive results for Tower Records:
"We are excited with the results our solution has delivered to Tower Records' DVD site, and look forward to providing the same kind of transformation in their music stores," said Steve Papa, CEO and founder of Endeca. "Tower recognized that it needed a way to create an interactive relationship between its customers and its large inventory and selection of products. We believe this is a key element in solving the problems associated with information overload, and our Guided Navigation technology is a unique approach that is providing a true solution."
Guided Navigation eclipses conventional "query and response" approaches to search, which place the burden on users to be familiar with the data set, have an idea of what to look for and how to describe the item, and finally to structure a query in a way the system will understand. Endeca InFront, with Guided Navigation functionality provides an intuitive interaction model that puts results in a precise context that tells Tower customers how to refine and explore further.
About Endeca
Endeca technology can be applied across a wide-range of business and customer applications including Customer Analytics, Financial Analytics, Human Resource Analytics, catalogs, news, and information portals. Endeca solutions unlock the value in enterprise data and help businesses increase productivity, make better and faster decisions, and improve overall employee and customer satisfaction. Endeca is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, MA with sales offices in Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York, San Francisco, Washington DC and London and is backed by leading venture capital firms including Ampersand Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and Venrock Associates. For more information, please visit www.endeca.com or email us at info@endeca.com.
About Tower Records
Since 1960 Tower Records has been recognized and respected throughout the world for its unique brand of retailing. Founded in Sacramento CA, by current Chairman Russ Solomon, the company's growth over four decades has made Tower Records a household name.
Tower Records owns and operates 175 stores worldwide with 57 franchise operations in seven countries. The company opened one of the first Internet music stores on America Online in June 1995 and followed a year later with the launch of Tower.com. The site was named "Best Music Commerce site" by Forrester Research in Fall 2000.
The recent founding of Tower Records own exclusive and independent record label, 33rd Street Records, has enabled the retailer to release popular and niche hit driven music, while placing great emphasis on both marketing and artist development.
Tower Records' commitment to introducing its customers to the latest trends in new product lines is paramount to the organization's retail philosophy. Tower forges ahead with the development of exciting shopping environments, espousing diverse product ranges, artist performance stages, personal electronics departments, and digital centers. Tower Records maintains its commitment to providing the deepest selection of packaged entertainment in the world merchandised in stores that celebrate the unique interests and needs of the local community.