fatso.co.nz™ announces partnership with RD1

Monday, 9 August 2004, 10:19 am
Press Release: Fatso.co.nz

August 04

The online DVD rental website fasto.co.nz, which launched earlier this month, has formed a strategic partnership with RD1 providing the rural community with direct and easy access to the website’s service. fatso.co.nz™ is a comprehensive new website where DVDs can be rented and delivered straight to your home.

The concept is simple – customers go online, order the movies they want to see and fatso.co.nz™ posts them out. Movies can be kept as long as customers want without incurring late fees. As soon as one movie is sent back, another is on its way.

Westside Media Managing Director Rob Berman, the company behind fasto.co.nz™, says “The rural sector has traditionally been under serviced in the movie rental and home entertainment market. We saw an opportunity to assist RD1 to provide a really useful service to their customers.”

RD1 is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fonterra Cooperative Group and is New Zealand’s pre-eminent specialist rural retailer with operations at 55 locations around New Zealand and online.

RD1 and fatso.co.nz have agreed on a multi channeled marketing approach which will allow RD1 customers to access and pay for their fatso.co.nz service via their RD1 account. This will provide an even higher level of convenience for those customers. fatso.co.nz™ offers customers more DVDs than they can eat. There are different pricing plans to suit different budgets and needs. For as little as $6.91 per week, less than the price of just ONE new release from a video shop, customers can receive as many DVDs as they want, with two DVDs on hand at any given time; or pay $9.22 per week for 3 DVDs at a time.

“As well as offering subscribers unlimited rental, door-to-door delivery and a transparent pricing model, fatso.co.nz™ provides an invaluable and convenient service for people. In particular, those people who live in remote or rural areas, people who are very busy and people who have children will find this alternative means of renting DVDs a life saver,” says Berman

Subscribers have access to a massive selection of movie titles, covering a wide variety of categories and tastes (everything from the latest releases to the classics, art-house, sports, music and documentaries). The site offers exclusive movie news and reviews from the fatso.co.nz™ movie expert Steven Gray.

fatso.co.nz™ is modeled on the successful USA site www.netflix.com. Netflix has over 2 million subscribers and grew by a staggering 80% in the last 12 months. Netflix.com currently ships over 600,000 discs a day – making it the single largest user of the US Postal system, exceeding even amazon.com!

“Online movie rental is shaking up the video industry world wide. Our aim is to emulate the huge success of overseas websites and offer subscribers an alternative to traditional video rental stores,” says Berman.

ENDS

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