Mercent Announces Key Customer Wins in Fastest Growing Online Shopping Categories

Online Retailing Solution Connects Merchants with Leading Internet Marketing Channels

Seattle, WA — February 9th, 2005 — Mercent, the single solution for online marketplace retailing, today announced seven new customers using the company’s flagship software product, Mercent Commerce System. These customers, leading brands in the fastest growing categories of online shopping, employ Mercent to promote and sell their products through the world’s leading online marketing channels.

New Mercent customers include SportStation.com, FurnitureFind.com, AutoAnything, Audio Advisor, Liz Earle Cosmetics, Gristedes, and Color Me Beautiful.

Matt Bowen, Chief Operations Officer for SportStation.com, noted that “by utilizing Mercent Commerce System to sell our products through Amazon.com we were able to end 2004 with over $500,000 in new revenues. Mercent Commerce System streamlined and automated our order processing, saving us the equivalent of three full-time seasonal employees.”

“To remain competitive, retailers must expand their online product marketing efforts beyond their own e-commerce Websites,” said Eric Best, CEO of Mercent, “we’re excited that our retail customers including SportStation are experiencing success by utilizing Mercent Commerce System to sell through leading online channels.”

Mercent's new customers represent the fastest growing online shopping categories:

• As online sales increase, some sectors are experiencing extremely high growth, with online sales expected to increase more than 40 percent in the health and beauty (61%); apparel (42%); and flowers, cards, and gifts (41%) categories. (“The State of Retailing 7.0”, Forrester Research / Shop.org)
• Online sales of apparel and accessories are expected to reach $12 billion by 2008, accounting for 4.9 percent of all apparel sales. (Jupiter Research)
• Home furnishings is the fastest growing online category. In 2004, 25% of online shoppers purchased a home furnishings item online, up from 17% a year before. (Roperis study, August 12, 2004)

About Mercent
Mercent is a leading provider of online channel marketing technology and services for retailers. Through its award-winning Mercent Retail™ SAAS technology and Mercent Performance™ professional services, Mercent helps the world’s most successful online merchants including 1-800-Flowers, Bass Pro Shops, Brookstone, GUESS?, L'Occitane USA, Redcats Group, and REI optimize online shopping channel marketing campaigns to drive customer acquisition, revenues, profits, and inventory velocity. Mercent is the single point of integration with a vast online advertising network that includes transactional marketplaces such as Amazon.com and eBay; comparison shopping engines (CSEs) such as Shopping.com and NextTag; affiliate marketing programs such as LinkShare and the Google Affiliate Network; and other product advertising channels including Microsoft Bing Cashback and Google Product Listing Ads (PLA). The company is a 'Selling on Amazon.com' Certified System Integrator, Buy.com Gold Certified Partner, eBay Certified Provider, certified Google Product Search Partner. Founded by a seasoned team of Amazon.com veterans, Mercent is a venture-funded company based in Seattle, WA. For more information, visit www.mercent.com.

Mercent PR Contact
Kristine Szarkowitz
press@mercent.com
Tel: 206-832-3900