glowria, Continental Europe’s leading on-line DVD rental service, announced today that it had purchased Palago GmBH, the owners of the German on-line DVD rental company inVDeo. With the acquisition of DiViDi last month, and now inVDeo, glowria is not only the leading on-line DVD rental company in France but is now the second largest player in Germany in terms of subscribers.

The two acquisitions give glowria a significant share of the German market, the largest Continental European on-line DVD rental market. Furthermore, inVDeo has strong partnerships with companies such as Freenet, a key ADSL service provider, and the AOK insurance group, which offers exclusive deals to its 3.5 million members. inVDeo also provides a white label service to Promarkt, a large chain of specialised electronics stores.

The acquisition of the No 3 and No 4 players in Germany puts glowria in the No 2 position behind Amango in a market that is set to continue its strong expansion.

Germany is not only Continental Europe’s biggest market for on-line DVD rental; it is also a country that has long embraced distance buying.

Germans are second only to Americans in number of mail order purchases, which has a natural evolution into on-line transactions. In addition, Germany suffers from a paucity of effective video rental chains, and is Continental Europe’s largest broadband market in volume terms.

“One of glowria’s key goals is to define the growing on-line DVD rental market in Europe,” explains Mihai Crasneanu, glowria’s CEO. This second acquisition in Germany is a major step in that direction. “We identified inVDeo and DiViDi as the key actors in German market, the companies with the most possibility for growth and expansion. The consolidation of these organisations allows us to create a superior market offering, and redefine the on-line DVD rental market in terms of selection and quality of service.”

While the French company will bring its operational expertise and highly successful business model to the German company, glowria is hoping to leverage inVDeo’s superior logistics process and IT development. Furthermore glowria will benefit from synergies between operations, logistics and catalogue management.

Glowria has been at the forefront of digital video entertainment, as both a partner on the Intel ViiV platform and as an editor of its own Video on Demand (VoD) software. With its VoD service launch imminent in France and its expansion to Germany by the end of this year, coupled with the intelligent growth of its on-line DVD rental service, glowria is on the way to becoming Continental Europe’s “one stop shop” for all digital entertainment needs.

Although specifics of the deal were not disclosed, Glow Entertainment Group SA acquired 100% of the shares of Palago GmbH, making it the full owner of both DiViDi and inVDeo. Frederic Baschet, vice president of International Acquisitions and current interim country manager, will supervise the integration both DiViDi and inVDeo operations until a permanent local country manager is put in place.

Story filed 16.05.06