Fastest Growing Online Shopping Categories--Direct Marketing, Mail Order, E-commerce News

Direct Marketing, Mail Order, and E-commerce News from the National Mail Order Association

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Mercent Announces Key Customer Wins in Fastest Growing Online Shopping Categories;
Online Retailing Solution Connects Merchants with Leading Internet Marketing Channels

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
www.mercent.com

Founded by veterans of Amazon.com, Mercent is the single solution for online marketplace retailing. 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 channels through one low-cost, single point of integration. These channels include Amazon.com, Yahoo! Shopping, BizRate.com, PriceGrabber.com, AOL inStore, NexTag, MSN Shopping, Shopping.com, mySimon, and Froogle. In addition, Mercent provides value-added services such as program management, data mapping, software development and integration, storefront design and optimization of search keywords and product categorization. Mercent customers include GUESS? (NYSE:GES), Lucky Brand Jeans (NYSE:LIZ), Wet Seal (Nasdaq:WTSLA), Finlay Enterprises (Nasdaq:FNLY), Proflowers (Nasdaq:PRVD), Crabtree & Evelyn, Car Toys, Fortunoff, The Shane Company, and other leading retailers. Mercent is a venture funded company based in Seattle, WA and is a Microsoft Certified Partner and an Amazon Services Certified Systems Integrator.

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