ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT INSIDE.COM (4/23/01) You can’t blame Thomas Middelhoff for trying. The chief executive of German media behemoth Bertelsmann — doted on in the business pages as a Visor-toting visionary dragging an ossified corporate empire out of the Westphalian mist — has upped the ante for global synergizing in one of his company’s most…Continue Reading
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Tagged Amazon.com, AOL Time Warner, BarnesandNoble.com, Bertelsmann, Bertelsmann Content Network, BMG, BMG Direct, BOL, Book-of-the-Month Club, Bookspan, CDNow, DirectGroup Bertelsmann, George McMillan, Gruner + Jahr, Klaus Eierhoff, Markus Wilhelm, Random House, Thomas Middelhoff, Wal-Mart
Want a Williams-Sonoma Cookbook to Go With That $379 Toaster? No retailer engenders guilty pleasure quite like Williams-Sonoma, the high-end purveyor of “home-centered” furnishings. Universally known for its $159 bottles of balsamic vinegar (“a unique viscosity and sumptuous flavor”) and $379 toasters (“this versatile appliance can also toast a sandwich”), Williams-Sonoma has invented a whole…Continue Reading
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Tagged AOL Time Warner, Barnes & Noble, Chambers, Chuck Williams, Fog City Press, Hold Everything, John Brown Publishing, John Fahey, John Owen, National Geographic Society, Norman Kolpas, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Potterybarn.com, Susan Maruyama, Terry Newell, The Body Shop, The Hive Group, The Mayo Clinic Williams-Sonoma Cookbook, Time Life, Weldon Owen Publishing, Williams-Sonoma, Williams-Sonoma Risotto, Williams-Sonoma Taste, Williams-Sonoma.com
Random House Parent Wages Global E-Commerce Turf War There is a special place on Thomas Middelhoff’s atlas of corporate geography that he likes to call “Bertelsmann Valley.” You might think of it as Silicon Valley stretched to a global scale and populated with scenic villages of dot-com shops, a few stray Holstein cows, and a…Continue Reading
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Tagged Amazon, Andreas Schmidt, AOL Time Warner, Audible, B&N.com, BOL.com, Book-of-the-Month Club, Bookspan, CBS Viacom, CDNow, Daniel Brewster, Digital World Services, Doubleday Direct, GetMusic, Gruner + Jahr, Peter Olson, Random House, Reader's Digest, Richard Sarnoff, Terra Lycos, Times Mirror, Xlibris
When the AAP unfurled its new ONIX guidelines at New York’s McGraw-Hill Auditorium on January 19, you couldn’t fault certain woozy invitees from thinking they’d wandered into a euphoric episode of Oprah. Before their very eyes, R.R. Bowker lay down with Baker & Taylor, Barnesandnoble.com clasped hands with Amazon, Ingram and Vista tearfully embraced, while…Continue Reading
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Tagged AAP, Amazon, AOL Time Warner, Baker & Taylor, BarnesandNoble.com, Carol Risher, Holtzbrinck, Ingram, McGraw-Hill, Pat Schroeder, Pearson, Quality Solutions, R.R. Bowker, Vista, Wiley