Yesasia Gives Emi Asia Sales Boost

YesAsia, a San Francisco-based online retailer of Asian entertainment products, has signed an agreement to market music product from EMI Asia to consumers and retailers in the U.S. and Canada.

YesAsia sells Asian music, games, karaoke, comic books, and gifts directly to consumers through its yesasia.com Web site. It also supplies retail shops. Since its inception in 1998, the company has become a leading distributor of Asian music in the North American market.

"EMI Asia artists like Faye Wong and Elva Hsiao are superstars in Asia," notes David Liu, YesAsia's COO. "We intend to reflect that success among the Asian population in North America."

The two companies plan a series of joint promotional campaigns that will target those Asian customers in North America who are already familiar with the genres. There will also be marketing efforts geared toward non-Asians who are unfamiliar with the music.

William Hsieh, EMI Asia's director of business development, says, "North America has enormous Asian market potential that is largely untapped, primarily due to the limited network of traditional retail music channels. We are confident of YesAsia's ability to help us tap that market."

YesAsia, with offices in the U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, also has sales alliances with Universal Music, Sony, and Rock Records. The Web site currently supports English and Chinese (with Japanese and Korean capability reportedly coming soon) and is a leading U.S.-based Internet source for Asian music. The company is also positioning itself to supply Chinese, Korean, and other Asian music to the Japanese market through its Japan-based Web site, yesasia.co.jp.

In a related development, YesAsia recently acquired Angel Pop, a competing online retailer that had been selling Korean products primarily to Korean customers in North America.