Fatbrain.com Taps Into Lucent’s Minds

Fatbrain.com (Nasdaq: FATB), an online bookstore designed for corporate professionals, suddenly has more than 140,000 new potential customers.

Today, Fatbrain.com announced a multiyear deal with leading telecommunications and network company Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU). Lucent has signed up for Fatbrain.com’s FindITNow intranet bookstore program, and Fatbrain.com will now supply technical and business books for Lucent’s more than 140,000 employees worldwide.

Fatbrain.com has launched a co-branded online bookstore that is accessible via a link on Lucent’s corporate intranet. All of Lucent’s employees are pre-approved to order books. The store offers more than 1,200 categories of technical and business books and documentation. It also offers computer-based, video-based and Web-based training. In addition, the new store features recommended reading lists based on the interest of Lucent employees, as well as book reviews.

Fatbrain.com Adds Lucent To Impressive Customer List

The FindITnow program has allowed businesses to provide customized professional bookstores, which offer discounted books and same-day shipping, on their corporate networks. Lucent is just the latest big company that Fatbrain has signed up for the FindITNow program. Other clients include America Online, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Network Associates, Bank of America, Nortel Networks, SAS Institute, Seagate and Siemens Information and Communications Networks.

“We’re thrilled with the success that the FindITnow program has found with industry-leading corporations like Lucent,” said Chris MacAskill, CEO and president of Fatbrain.com. “The success of our business-to-business program and our recent branding efforts have contributed to the strong brand recognition we are enjoying in the online books market.”

Branding is a big deal at Fatbrain.com, which changed its name from ComputerLiteracy.com earlier this year to raise brand awareness. Overall, Fatbrain.com serves more than 1,700 corporate customers in various ways. These customers include Microsoft.

Stock Impact

Shares of Fatbrain.com, which also sells its catalog of products to the general public, were up 1 to 17 in early trading today. The stock had a nice run up after changing its name earlier in the year, underscoring the importance of building a brand. However, Fatbrain.com stock has struggled along with the rest of the Internet sector in recent months and is now trading at a little more than half of its highs of the year.

Regardless, the company is getting bigger. Last month, Fatbrain.com opened a new Silicon Valley headquarters, relocated its distribution center and added tens of thousands of titles to its product catalog.