UC Irvine Bookstore Makes Global Pitch on Internet

It’s 6:30 p.m., and Michael Kiley, associate director of the UC Irvine bookstore, is rushing off to Japanese class. “I need to learn just some rudimentary stuff so I can handle orders from Japan,” he says.

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The bookstore has been drawing as many as 120,000 browsers a week from around the globe since it began advertising on the Internet. Among its biggest customers, Kiley said, have been Japanese academics seeking technical books published only in English, and aficionados of Japanese animation art, called anime.

Although Kiley started the venture in April just for fun, his experiment is drawing national acclaim and is even helping to set the standard for Internet advertising.

“They have an excellent format,” said David Scott Lewis, editor of the electronics industry magazine Hot Off the Tree. “It is one of the best I have seen.”

Kiley describes the service as the only on-line college bookstore in the world. Books, records, CD-ROMs and sweat shirts are displayed on the World Wide Web, a subset of the Internet--a group of computer networks linking an estimated 30 million computer users around the globe.

The World Wide Web offers not only standard text but also color pictures, video displays and sound.

The UCI bookstore’s Web venture has not been terribly lucrative yet, Kiley said, drawing about $5,000 worth of electronic mail orders a month. But he and others see great profit potential for the future.

“Everyone is doing it now,” Lewis said, citing the consortium of computer makers, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Apple, that recently entered the on-line marketplace by offering home computer accessories for sale on the Web.

Multinational corporations, among them Pizza Hut and Hilton Hotels, are also experimenting with Internet advertising.

Students across Southern California are discovering the UCI cyberstore as a welcome alternative to fighting over textbooks and standing in long lines to make purchases.

Joshua Chou, a student at UCLA, said he shops at the UCI store electronically because he likes the easy pace. He can browse through the inventory from his computer terminal at home and send his orders by e-mail.

The store also courts repeat business by offering a 10% discount to e-mail customers who pay an annual $10 membership fee. The price break as well as the convenience, Chou said, keeps him coming back.

The World Wide Web is only about 5 years old, and the idea of advertising on it is even younger. Companies that do use it typically make presentations similar to that of Hilton, which adds color photos to text so that its displays resemble magazine pages.

“UCI’s site is very attractive,” Lewis said. “I have seen sites that are more attractive, but they don’t have a lot of content.”

UCI is on the cutting edge, designing dozens of pages that combine text with color pictures, graphics and sound effects such as narration and music. A recent promotion for a travel book titled “The Big Island of Hawaii” included an interactive map that allowed readers to get information about specific points of interest on the island.

“We use it to draw people into the site,” Kiley said, “and hope that once they are there they will browse.” UCI’s biggest on-line sellers, technical books, typically do not have great visual appeal, he said, but the store hopes to attract a potential buyer drawn to the site by travel and other picture books.

UCI has also managed to market on the Web without drawing criticism so far from purists who say there is no room for commerce on the Internet.

A heated debate on that topic began in April when a pair of Arizona lawyers sent e-mail advertisements for their services to millions of Internet users. They were bombarded by thousands of messages from outraged subscribers warning them that they had violated the unwritten law prohibiting unsolicited commercial messages.

Lewis said the UCI bookstore ads are not prompting a similar outcry because, unlike the e-mail messages, they have to be sought out. Besides, he said, the UCI concept is in sync with the interests of the Internet’s technology-savvy subscribers.

“There is tremendous demand for a service like this,” Lewis said. “I can’t tell you how many times in the user groups people ask where to find books on certain topics.”

Hiroshi Deguchi, a professor of communications at the International University of Japan, shops for books on subjects such as econometrics and set theory. Those English texts are difficult to find in Japan, he said.

UCI’s selection is excellent, Deguchi said, as is the bookstore’s service.

The other big draw after technical publications is the bookstore’s extensive inventory of anime, including comics, books, videos, laser discs and CD-ROMs.

Mats Roger Nielsen has become a frequent UCI shopper since he discovered the anime collection last year. Anime, he said, is nearly impossible to find in his country, Norway, and browsing the UCI Web site is much cheaper and faster than making inquiries to bookstores by regular mail.

“Living in Norway, regular mail to and from California takes at least five days,” Nielsen said. “With e-mail, I get answers to my numerous questions the next day, even with a nine-hour time difference--and for free.”