Russian Art on CD ROMs

[Robert Whittaker]

SEELangs Members:
        This seemed to hold more than just commercial interest.  Perhaps a
member might wish to responde.
                Robert W. (List Co-Owner)
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Date: Sat, 9 Aug 1997 00:27:31 GMT
X-Sender: hgmarch at pop03.ny.us.ibm.net
To: Seelangs-Request at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
From: "Henri G. MARCHAND" <hgmarch at ibm.net>
Subject: Russian CD-ROM's
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Dear Sir, 
I got your address from Ann Otto which belongs to the list of Friends &
Partners and suggested that I write to you in order to find out if the
people who are in your list could be interested by the CD-ROM's that we are
trying to promote in Europe and USA. You will find below some information
that will help you understand our goa : find out who, in the USA, could be
interested in Russian Art and Culture. 
About two years ago, after retiring from IBM, I decided to help a small
Russian company (Intersoft Inc.) which produces CD-ROM 's on Russian art
find some market outside Russia. I had appreciated the quality of Intersoft
designs during the two years that I spent in Moscow for IBM (91 to 93).
I concentrated initially on the French market where Art CD-ROM's are quite
in demand following the huge success of the CD-ROM on « The Louvre » which
has been sold in more than 200K copies !
The first two titles of Intersoft have been localised into French and are
distributed there by two key distributors. 
I deciced last year to look at the US market where number of CD-ROM players
installed in homes is quite larger than in France (Estimated at only 1.5
Million). Unfortunately, apart from some of the major museums (Metropolitan
Museum of NY, Museum of fine Arts of Boston),  I did not find many «
distributors » interested by CD-ROM's on Russian art. I have made an attempt
to list one of the titles in the « CD-ROM Shop » an Internet direct sale web
site ... but, again not much interest.
This year,   being back for vacation in the US, I have started to visit
shops that carry CD-ROM's and was able to discover that ALL Art CD-ROM's had
now disappeared from the shelves, even the titles from Corbis ! 
I am  almost ready to give up since I really have the impression that no
one, in the US is interested in any Art and Culture CD-ROM's and certainly
not from Russia.
Rather that give you a description of the titles available from Intersoft I
suggest that you look at the   Web page
http://www.intersoft.ru
The two first titles  « Treasures of Russia » and « The Hermitage » are
available in English/Russian right now (and also in French/Russian). The
english version of Alexander & Napoleon will be available in English in the
fall.  
Could you help me understand if there is a market for these products in the
US  ?
Would you have any idea about adequate distribution  channels (Librairies,
Universities ...) ?
If you are interested personally by these CD's,  I can send them to you
although the cost of shipping from France is quite high, compared to the
price of the product, for a single package.
All the customers who got these CD's have really enjoyed reading all the
stories associated with Russian Art from famous museums such as the
Tretiakov Gallery, The Russian Museum of  St. Peterbsburg and ,evidently,
The Hermitage. About 3000 copies of each titles have been sold in France
while only 1500 of The Hermitage and few hundreds of  Treasures of Russia
have been  sold in the US. I cannot believe that not more people are
interested in these subjects in the US.
I thank you in advance for your help,

Henri MARCHAND
InfraNet Services
5 rue Delerue 
94100 St Maur (France)
 FAX : 33 1 48 89 26 74

Contact in the US (until 8/22) and in addition to Email : 
Tel    : 203 972 1695
FAX : 203 972 01 04