TCL Branded TV Enters Europe Under New Partnership With Carrefour

TCL Branded TV Enters Europe Under New Partnership With Carrefour

April 25th,2006

Recently, TTE Corporation, a subsidiary of TCL Multimedia Technology Ltd., signed an agreement with Carrefour, the number one retailer in Europe and 2nd largest retailer in the world, to sell TCL-branded TV sets in Carrefour stores in France, Italy, Spain and Belgium. This cooperation marks the first time that TCL TV sets will be sold in Europe and is therefore a breakthrough in TTE efforts to penetrate the European market.

The launch product is a TCL-branded 14 inch CRT+DVD Combo that has been specially designed for the Europe market and for sale exclusively in Carrefour. With a sleek design, multi-country and multi-language set-up, the TV targets Europe youth and small family market. The first 25,000 sets of Carrefour initial order of 55,000 sets have already been delivered as of March 2006. TTE officials estimate that total sales volume for this product for 2006will exceed 100,000 sets.

Fei YAN, Vice President of TTE Europe Business Center and S.OEM Business Center, said that a sales partnership with Carrefour is the best means to enter an increasingly competitive European Market. This is because Europe TV market is not only highly competitive, but also very mature and saturated with major presences of every leading television company.

Furthermore the European Union antidumping policy erects an additional barrier to Chinese television makers. Thus, for a company like TCL which never had its own branded TVs sold in Europe, a sales partnership is not only a new innovation, but also a necessity, for entering Europe. innovative, but also necessary.

Fei Yan said that Carrefour is the right partner, due to its large sales network and customer profile, all of which are a good match for the new product.

Although this is a breakthrough partnership for TTE and Carrefour, the two companies have a history of strong cooperation, based on the sale of TTE "Thomson" branded televisions. In addition, other products build under OEM by TTE but branded under other names have also been sold by Carrefour.

Fei YAN stated that TTE will seek to expand the Carrefour sales model globally with other customers and looks forward to announcing similar deals in the near future.