Jungle customers earn discounts through free ISP

The drums are beating even louder for Jungle.com -- the brand new e-store with the Amazonesque name -- which opens its door for business on August 30. The 3i-backed online department store kicks off with a £7.5 million marketing spend; most of the first slug goes on traditional media – billboards, radio, national newspapers and the like. Then there’s the "£10 million" consumer giveaway -- and don’t forget the money Jungle.com founder Steve Bennett had to shell out for the domain name (we don’t know how much he paid either). Clearly, the company needs to hit the ground running. Jungle will sell a full-range of consumer goodies, and is linking up to other major retailers, including Carphone Warehouse, Britain’s biggest mobile phone supplier. But at the heart of the store is a catalogue of 90,000 computer products, and a software download shop, courtesy of Jungle’s intimate relationship with Software Warehouse, a leading British computer retailer/mail-order house, owned and run by Bennett. He is now devoting his attentions full-time to Jungle and has appointed a (so-far unnamed) MD from outside the industry to run Software Warehouse. Jungle intends to drive customers to its store through its own free ISP, jungleLink.net. Users earn loyalty points tied to the amount of time they spend online -- which they can convert into discounts on purchases they make at the Jungle department store. This is a clever twist and one that other retailers will surely copy. But Jungle has a head start here -- SWWH already operates a smallish free ISP. Presumably SWWH will convert these into JungleLink customers. ® Daily Net finance news from i>The Register