Online retailer Amazon.com announced today it will launch Amazon.fr, a French-language site offering books, music CDs, DVDs and videos dedicated to customers in France and to French-speaking customers around the world.

Amazon.fr will launch early Thursday morning Paris time. Amazon disclosed its plans at a press preview today in Paris.

Amazon.fr is Amazon.com, Inc.’s third European site and offers the complete catalogue of French titles. ‘We’re grateful to the tens of thousands of French customers who have shopped at Amazon.com during the past five years,’ said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. ‘With the launch of Amazon.fr, we’re making the Amazon shopping experience — with our obsession on customers — available to French-speaking customers everywhere.’

‘This is a store created for and designed by French people, which for the first time will allow French literature, music, film and culture to be accessed easily and quickly by people around the globe,’ said Diego Piacentini, Amazon.com senior vice president and general manager, international. ‘As with the universal Amazon focus on the customer experience, we’ll provide vast selection, great prices, excellent customer service and 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week convenience. This is one further step in our plans to become a global merchandiser.’

Amazon.fr will be supported by two facilities in France, with operations and administration at Guyancourt and a distribution center in Orleans. Customer service needs will be handled through Amazon’s pan-European customer service center in The Hague, the Netherlands. That facility employs native French speakers to work with Amazon.fr customers.

We hope our French friends enjoy their lower postage rates….