Tiffany launches Fourth Site, A Canadian E-Commerce Site

Tiffany & Co., looking to widen its international customer base, launched a Canadian e-commerce web site. It is following in the footsteps of other e-tailers that established their local presence by creating local sites, sometimes identical to the original one.

As Tiffany is deepening its involvement with the Canadian diamond industry with mining, polishing and marketing operations, it is taking its Canadian presence further, offering diamond jewelry on a site dedicated to the Canadian market.

The site, which opened without any fanfare earlier this year, is nearly identical to the main site with hardly any difference besides prices noted in Canadian dollars. The one notable difference is the absence of the Wedding & Gift Registry section.

Tiffany already has a Japanese site and a site dedicated to the British market in addition to its main one. Customers can purchase items directly from all the sites except the Japanese site.

Companies often open localized sites to supply local information such as store locations, address certain cultural differences and offer an interface in the local language.

But while e-commerce operations are a source of revenue for the company, $42.8 million in 2004, it only represented 2 percent of total revenues. Tiffany might be seeking to strengthen its international sales, using the sites to promote their brand. International sales last year were $857 million, nearly 40 percent of its $2.2 billion sales that year.