Caiman Holdings Inc (Caiman.com) buys Tower.com

[dx23]

From Home Media Retailing:

Tower.com Sold for $4.2M
Author: ERIK GRUENWEDEL
egruenwedel@questex.com
Posted: March 22, 2007
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Tower Records, the shuttered 40-year music retail icon that couldn’t overcome industry trends favoring music downloads over CDs, ironically lives on as an online venture — for now.

Caiman Holdings Inc., headquartered in the British Virgin Islands, emerged the apparent winner with a $4.2 million bid for Tower.com, which includes rights to the Tower name, according to a filing Monday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del.

The West Sacramento, Calif.-based music retail chain declared bankruptcy last year and shuttered operations in December following an asset liquidation sale.

Caiman — an independent distributor of music and video — was among six bidders for Tower’s online venture, which included Amazon.com. The company assumes all trademarks and licenses associated with Tower March 23.

Tower.com has continued to operate on a limited scale, according to The Sacramento Bee.

The funds will be given to Tower’s creditors.

The rights to Tower.com originally acquired for $3.8 million by Norton LLC, a San Francisco-based operator of vintage rock ‘n’ roll music sites, fell through when Norton realized the transaction did not include transfer rights to the site’s customer list, according to a filing.

About 142 Tower stores continue to operate independently in seven countries.

Michael Dreese, co-founder of Newbury Comics, a New England-based retail chain, said Caiman is one of the biggest sellers of music CDs and movie DVDs on Amazon.

“They are the largest third-party seller on the Amazon platform,” said Dreese.

He also noted that Caiman has earned a reputation as grey market importer, which often involves distributing product beyond regional coding, thereby rendering it unplayable on many players.

Dreese said the issue of grey market movies and music on Amazon, eBay and other sites has been significant and he lauded Amazon’s efforts at eliminating the problem among its DVD offerings.

A representative from Caiman was not immediately available for comment.

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/ind...2&newsid=10431

I really hate caiman.com. They have hundreds of listings at amazon.com and most of the times they don't carry the item you order or they send you an inferior non-region 1 releases. But since they are amazon.com largest third party seller, and bring a lot of money to the table in fees, they don't get punished or banned, no matter how much bad feedback they recieve.

[Funk]

I really hate caiman.com.

Never bought DVDs from them (don't really buy DVDs any more) but they're pretty good for import CDs, I've found.

[animatedude]

what a bad news.this is like saying the devil will buy the innocent.

[Numanoid]

I love caiman.com. I've bought maybe 20 or so discs from them through Amazon, never had a single glitch, and they have fantastic prices on both used and region 2 discs. They also have very expedient shipping, in my experience.

[g]

One recent night caiman received feedback sixty times from the same buyer saying the same thing on amazon. I wrote an email to amazon complaining they were probably making up their own feedback.

[Alan Smithee]

And the first thing they've done is lay off most of the people who worked there! I can now say that I worked at Tower.com for the past 5 1/2 years, answering the 800 number- if you've ever called it you've probably talked to me. The new owners were telling us last week that they weren't going to be downsizing anyone and all that, but today most of us got the axe. We were one of the last places that you could call and talk to an actual person in the United States, which usually made up for any other shortcomings *COUGHpricesCOUGH* So you won't be getting the service you were paying for previously, so might as well order from DeepDiscount now.

[KFelon]

I like Caiman, I've gotten some really excellent deals on imports that I would've had to pay twice as much for through any other e-tailer or even eBay.

[KFelon]

Originally Posted by Alan Smithee

And the first thing they've done is lay off most of the people who worked there! I can now say that I worked at Tower.com for the past 5 1/2 years, answering the 800 number- if you've ever called it you've probably talked to me. The new owners were telling us last week that they weren't going to be downsizing anyone and all that, but today most of us got the axe. We were one of the last places that you could call and talk to an actual person in the United States, which usually made up for any other shortcomings *COUGHpricesCOUGH* So you won't be getting the service you were paying for previously, so might as well order from DeepDiscount now.

Sorry to hear that you got let go. Best of luck finding a new job. =(

[DVD Josh]

Originally Posted by Alan Smithee

And the first thing they've done is lay off most of the people who worked there! I can now say that I worked at Tower.com for the past 5 1/2 years, answering the 800 number- if you've ever called it you've probably talked to me. The new owners were telling us last week that they weren't going to be downsizing anyone and all that, but today most of us got the axe. We were one of the last places that you could call and talk to an actual person in the United States, which usually made up for any other shortcomings *COUGHpricesCOUGH* So you won't be getting the service you were paying for previously, so might as well order from DeepDiscount now.

If it was service people were wanting, they weren't getting it from DDD in the first place.

[starman9000]

Originally Posted by DVD Josh

If it was service people were wanting, they weren't getting it from DDD in the first place.

Isn't that what he was saying?