Crabtree & Evelyn Selects Mercent to Maximize Online Sales at Amazon.com

Leading National Retailer Deploys Mercent Commerce System to Maximize Online Sales in Rapidly Growing Beauty Category

Seattle, WA — October 5th, 2004 — Mercent, the single solution for online marketplace retailing, today announced that its flagship software product, Mercent Commerce System, has been selected by Crabtree & Evelyn to promote and sell products to over 42 million active customer accounts at Amazon.com. Crabtree & Evelyn sells in more than 40 countries with more than 350 stores worldwide, offering beautiful gifts and everyday luxuries that capture the essence of English style.

According to ‘The State of Retailing Online 7.0’, Forrester Research estimates that online retail sales in the Health and Beauty category will increase a dramatic 61% in 2004. “Mercent Commerce System enables Crabtree & Evelyn to tap the growing consumer appetite for health and beauty products online,” noted Mercent CEO, Eric Best.

To continue its expansion in this rapidly growing market, Crabtree & Evelyn sought a cost-effective software solution that would increase online sales and reduce integration and maintenance costs. “We selected Mercent Commerce System as part of our strategy to expand into new online sales channels,” said Tom Angelo, Crabtree & Evelyn Director of Business Development. “Mercent helps Crabtree & Evelyn more effectively promote and sell our products to Amazon.com shoppers, and reduces our ongoing merchandising costs.”

Accelerating Time To Market
Mercent's flagship product, Mercent Commerce System, allows multi-channel retailers to effectively promote and sell products to more than 100 million shoppers across 10 leading online consumer marketplaces through one low-cost, single point of integration. These marketplaces include Amazon.com, Yahoo! Shopping, BizRate.com, PriceGrabber.com, AOL inStore, NexTag, MSN Shopping, Shopping.com, mySimon, and Froogle. Tim Clark, partner and analyst with The FactPoint Group, adds "Mercent is emerging as a key tool for retailers to add 10 Internet shopping venues, including Amazon.com, to their marketing mix."

Mercent Commerce System offered Crabtree & Evelyn faster and easier integration with the Merchants@Amazon.com platform, and better control over the selling and merchandising data exchanged with Amazon. Mercent Commerce System automates the exchange of product, order, inventory, fulfillment, and settlement data between Crabtree and Evelyn’s data center and Amazon’s Web services-based interfaces. Mercent Commerce System scales to support Crabtree and Evelyn’s complete product catalog and peak holiday order volumes. The product manages more than 1 million orders per day and catalogs with more than 500,000 SKUs. Mercent Commerce System’s message-based architecture prevents downtime and transaction failures, allowing Crabtree & Evelyn to maximize sales through Amazon. In addition to providing its flagship software product, Mercent supports Crabtree & Evelyn’s relationship with Amazon.com through value-added services including data mapping and technical support.

About Crabtree & Evelyn Crabtree & Evelyn captures the essence of English style with simple luxuries for the bathroom, bedroom, kitchen and garden. We travel the world to bring everyday luxuries and beautiful gifts that make life a little more precious - chic comforts for your home, fragrances and pampering treats for your home spa as well as delicious nibbles for your kitchen. At Crabtree & Evelyn, we understand that everyday is far too precious to be mundane. We are passionate about what we believe: taking pleasure in simple things, making time for yourself and always expecting the best. Quality is central to our philosophy: Our bath and body care products reflect the very best of science and time-tested natural ingredients. Our soaps have established a benchmark of quality throughout the world with over thirty separate steps to the making of a single bar. Our foods are made with the finest fresh natural ingredients and contain no artificial colours or fillers. Crabtree & Evelyn is sold in over 40 countries and has over 350 stores worldwide with 160 stores in the U.S. We are also available online at www.crabtree-evelyn.com. Recognised as an exceptional brand, Crabtree & Evelyn now enjoys Superbrands status in the UK, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong.

About Mercent
Founded by veterans of Amazon.com, Mercent provides online marketing technology and services to help retail merchants optimize performance across online channels. Mercent's on-demand platform, Mercent Retail, increases revenue and gross margins by promoting the right products with the right merchandising offers and placement. Mercent Retail provides a single point of integration between existing retail management systems and The Mercent Shopping Network, supporting more than 50 leading online marketing channels including transactional marketplaces such as Amazon.com and SHOP.COM, shopping portals such as Shopping.com and Shopzilla, paid inclusion programs like Yahoo! Search Submit Pro, and affiliate marketing programs such as LinkShare and Performics -- making it easy for merchants to automate, measure, and optimize online product merchandising campaigns through these channels. Mercent customers include 1-800-Flowers, Benefit Cosmetics, REI, GUESS?, Bass Pro Shops, Redcats Group, Celebrate Express, Levenger, and other leading retailers. Mercent is an Amazon.com Certified System Integrator, Buy.com Gold Certified Partner, SHOP.COM Certified Data Feed Provider, and Yahoo! Search Submit Pro certified feed provider. Mercent is a venture-funded company based in Seattle, WA. For more information, visit www.mercent.com.

Contact
Marnie Cannon
Communications Director, Mercent
206-832-3900
press@mercent.com