DELRAY BEACH, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 21, 2006--Retail, E-Tail
and Direct Marketing solution provider Ecometry Corporation and GERS
Retail Systems, the San Diego-based leading provider of planning,
merchandising and supplier collaboration software solutions, announced
today the combination of their organizations. The transaction was
funded by Bay area private equity firm Golden Gate Capital.
The combined organization is named Escalate Retail, reflecting the
focus on improving retailer profitability through customer-focused
solutions. By combining the front-office strengths of Ecometry,
customer-interaction and loyalty with GERS strengths in merchandise
planning and execution, the company will provide retailers advanced
capabilities to meet their customer demands across channels. The newly
formed company will be led by CEO Stewart Bloom, President John
Marrah, and CFO Michael Larkin. The company will have headquarters in
San Diego and Delray Beach. Six additional satellite offices are
located across North America and in Europe.
"We are excited about our ability to bring integrated and customer
focused solutions to the industry," said Stewart M. Bloom, CEO of
Escalate Retail. "The synergies created by merging GERS and Ecometry
into a significant new entity, Escalate Retail, have immediate benefit
to our current customers and create a compelling new option for
retailers who are looking for a unique technology partner to help with
their business growth agenda."
Market analysts see significant growth potential for the combined
offering as retailers demand market choices other than monolithic ERP
applications and isolated point solutions. Additionally, no other
vendor has made customer intelligence available, across all customer
touch-points and in back-office merchandise and planning applications.
"After analyzing opportunities in the market for over a year, we
are very excited to join forces with GERS," said John Marrah,
President of Escalate Retail. "We are both committed to the goal of
delivering highly extensible retail solutions that can be delivered
individually or as a comprehensive suite."
Escalate Retail has over 650 retail clients across North America
and Europe. Current clients include Home Depot, Williams Sonoma,
Nordstrom, Hot Topic, Sainsbury, Harry Rosen, Louis Vuitton, Blue Fly,
Z Gallerie, Brooks Brothers, Saks, Lamps Plus, Sony and Raymour &
Flanigan.
"Hot Topic uses GERS solutions for merchandising, inventory
management and analytics and Ecometry's Blue Martini solutions for
e-commerce, online order management, loyalty programs, and marketing
analytics," said Tom Beauchamp, CIO for Hot Topic. "The consolidation
of these two highly customer-centric solution providers provides
opportunities for Hot Topic to leverage our current investments. The
application portfolio of the combined company will provide more
efficient integration of applications across our enterprise, both
in-store and on-line, ultimately creating an even more satisfying
shopping experience for our customers across all sales channels."
For more information, please visit www.ecometry.com or
www.gers.com.
About Ecometry
Ecometry Corp. is the premier provider of customer-focused
software solutions for direct- and multi-channel commerce. Its
products include the Blue Martini software, which enables
multi-channel retailers to increase same-store sales, boost e-commerce
revenue and drive customer loyalty, and the Ecometry Commerce Suite,
which is a high-volume suite of business applications designed to
completely automate the front- and back-end operations of
multi-channel retailers.
About GERS
GERS Retail Systems is a leading supplier of software solutions
for consumer-centric retailing. By facilitating the real-time flow of
transactions and information across the entire retail organization,
our solutions enable retailers to consistently anticipate, understand,
and fulfill their customers' expectations for products that are
priced, located, and timed to provide the optimal shopping experience.
GERS solutions manage the merchandising life cycle, multi-channel
selling, planning, business intelligence, and supply chain
synchronization to create a great customer experience.
About Golden Gate Capital
Golden Gate Capital (www.goldengatecap.com) is a San
Francisco-based private equity investment firm with $2.6 billion of
capital under management. Golden Gate is dedicated to partnering with
world class management teams to invest in change-intensive, growth
businesses. They target investments of up to $100 million in
situations where there is a demonstrable opportunity to significantly
enhance a company's value. The principals of Golden Gate have a long
and successful history of investing with management partners across a
wide range of industries and transaction types, including leveraged
buyouts, recapitalizations, corporate divestitures and spin-offs,
build-ups and venture stage investing.
KONTAKT: za GERS Retail Systems
Marichelli Heredia, 305-446-2700
pressinfo@escalate.com
