KOMO's Business Editor, Brian Gregory, says Mercent will use the proceeds of the round to expand features of the company's flagship software product, Mercent Retail, to provide retail customers access to additional online merchandising channels.

Madrona Venture Group, where Alberg is Managing Director, has invested in Seattle-based Mercent Corporation, a 2-year-old startup whose software helps merchants connect to online marketplaces. Alberg, an early investor in online retailing giant Amazon.com Inc., took a seat on Mercent's board.

In the rich, fast-growing world of online shopping, two giants -- eBay and Amazon -- rise above all others.

Retailers look to Internet commerce to boost sales, but if you already have a successful e-commerce Website up and running, what more can you do? Northwest Cable News' Cam Johnson takes us inside a small company that helps big business collect more Internet shopping dollars.

One firm well-positioned to benefit from the trend toward Amazon Web Services is Mercent, a two-year-old, privately held, Seattle-based software company. Mercent is certified by Amazon to bring third party sellers into compliance with the Amazon technical standards.

The term 'location, location, location' is taking on a whole new meaning online as retailers look to drive sales by making their products available for consumers, not only on their own Web site, but through a host of partner channels such as Amazon.com or portals such as Yahoo, MSN, etc.

Retailers, catalogers, and direct marketers are connecting with customers where they shop and buy through partner-enabled channels combining services from merchandisers like Amazon.com, advertising portals, and affiliate networks. These are distributed merchandising networks (DMNs).

What do you do if you're one of the leading retailers in the world and yet still want to see more people clothed in your denim? For GUESS?, expanding their stonewashed wares meant choosing Mercent.

Los Angeles–based GUESS?, Inc. is strengthening its commitment to e-commerce. The company has recently expanded its online retail presence through a venture with Seattle-based Mercent, whose online merchandising platform facilitates transactions between Guess?' e-commerce system and Amazon.com's platform.

KOMO's Business Editor, Brian Gregory, says Mercent will help GUESS? sell products through Amazon.com and merchandise products through AOL's inStore, Shopping.com, and BizRate.com.

Mercent CEO, Eric Best, discusses the history of Mercent and his business philosophy of discovering customer needs through service engagements and then developing products to programmatically address those needs.

The e-commerce Web services specialist is helping a growing list of retail manufacturers sell their wares via Amazon.

Distributed merchandising networks imply a growing "distance" between the customer point of sale and the seller and an increase in the number of intermediaries involved in merchandising and selling. The ability to manage these intermediaries becomes a key driver of sales performance, brand stewardship and customer experience.

Mercent - the syndicated merchandising information feed service that Car Toys uses to update and maintain product info and offerings on almost a dozen shopping sites simultaneously.

According to director of business development Tom Angelo, the Woodstock, CT company should be able to automate nearly 90% of its order processing with Mercent — a big advantage, since this had been a highly manual operation.

Adding products to shopping search engines and popular e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon is becoming an increasingly popular strategy for online merchants to find new customers. Yet even for large e-tailers, managing those shopping sites often proves time-consuming and confusing -- fortunately, that's where Mercent comes in.

"Mercent helps Crabtree & Evelyn more effectively promote and sell our products to Amazon.com shoppers, and reduces our ongoing merchandising costs,” says Tom Angelo, Crabtree & Evelyn Director of Business Development

Crabtree & Evelyn selected the technology to increase online sales and reduce integration and maintenance costs, said Tom Angelo, director of business development at the company's U.S. headquarters in Woodstock, Conn.

Retailers, catalogers and direct marketers are connecting with customers where they shop and buy through partner-enabled channels, combining services from merchandisers such as Amazon.com, advertising portals and affiliate networks.

Car Toys enlisted Mercent to manage all of the data flow between Amazon.com and the specialty retailer via Mercent's online platform. Now, when orders for Car Toys merchandise are placed on Amazon's site, the process works exactly as if the order were placed via CarToys.com.

Leading beauty retailer goes with Mercent to integrate existing databases and systems with Amazon Web-services interface.

The advantage of the Mercent solution is that it allows multichannel retailers to promote and sell products to more than 100 million shoppers across more than 20 leading online consumer marketplaces through one low-cost point of integration.

Using Mercent, Car Toys has experienced increased revenues coming from Amazon.com, increased traffic to their site coming from online shopping portals, and has gained the ability to market to their customers in a controlled and dynamic way.

Mercent lets Car Toys reach Amazon's 42 million active accounts and 60 million shoppers per month at Shopping.com, Yahoo Shopping, and other sites.

Eric Best, CEO and founder of Mercent, discusses innovative ways to make e-commerce ventures successful, as well as how to connect with customers and drive your revenue.

Car Toys is using Mercent to expand and automate its marketplace relationships to reach new customers.

Car Toys can now merchandise and sell products to over 42 million active customer accounts at Amazon.com, and 60 million monthly shoppers at Yahoo! Shopping, BizRate.com, PriceGrabber.com, AOL Shopping, NexTag, MSN Shopping, Shopping.com, mySimon, and Froogle.

Glen Hamilton, Director of E-commerce at Car Toys, says, "Mercent provides software and the systems to manage online marketplace relationships. In so doing, it has allowed us to dramatically increase our sales from those relationships and lowered the cost per transaction from those marketplaces."

KOMO's Business Editor, Brian Gregory, says two local companies are working together to create a global retail presence. Mercent helps Car Toys capitalize on the $144 Billion online retail market by selling through Amazon.com and leading shopping portals.

Mercent -- a Seattle-based startup formed by a former Amazon.com executive to provide technology services that help merchants sell products via the Internet -- has landed a new customer, Car Toys, a specialty retailer of audio sound systems for cars, mobile electronics and cell phones.

A decade after the birth of e-commerce, online retailers are reaching a crossroads in terms of gauging customer satisfaction. Eric Best, founder and CEO of online marketing firm Mercent says that merchants' options are improving all the time.

As e-tailers adopt personalization technologies and practices, they are taking their cues from the customer to set some limits on just how personal they should get. Mercent CEO Eric Best contributes.

What if you could have access as an online retailer to over 100 million shoppers monthly? Seattle-based Mercent's newly released online merchandising platform connects retailers to an extensive base of recognized online marketplaces.

Altrec.com has found a way to save 50% of the costs of building connections to online shopping portals while boosting overall sales 8%, CEO Mike Morford tells InternetRetailer.com.

New software enables one interface to manage ecommerce sales at Amazon.com and product listings through Froogle, Shopping.com and others. An interview with Eric Best, Founder and CEO of Mercent.

Mercent provides a single point of integration for retailers looking to maximize their return on investment in online shopping portals. The company licenses its software to manage product listings on leading shopping portals, and sales through the online shopping kingpin Amazon.com.

Seattle-based technology start-up Mercent has released a new Web vehicle that gives retailers access to a broad base of customers at leading online marketplaces through a single point of integration.

Mercent serves as an integration point for hooking your online catalog or inventory software to the major shopping search engines -- including Froogle, Yahoo! Shopping, Shopping.com, and others -- in addition to Amazon.com.

Saffron Rouge, a retailer of organic beauty products, has been able to join the Amazon e-marketplace through the combination of Web services APIs published by Amazon.com, and the software and services of Mercent, a third-party integration company founded specifically to connect sellers to online marketplaces.

KOMO's Business Editor, Brian Gregory, says businesses are getting help selling products online. Mercent is a self-funded and profitable company that enables retailers to sell goods online…