RetailExchange.com Receives $11 Million Financing from Internet Capital Group and Other Investors
PR Newswire - December 28, 1999 09:32
Business-to-business E-commerce Site Poised to Capitalize on Huge Market Opportunity
BOSTON, Dec. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- RetailExchange.com, a business-to-business online marketplace specializing in the trade of excess retail goods, today announced $11 million in equity financing from a consortium led by Internet Capital Group (Nasdaq: ICGE). Other participants in the financing include Dorset Capital, Castile Ventures, and Gordon Brothers Group, LLC. Concurrent with the financing, Mark Lotke, Managing Director of ICG, and John Berg, Managing Partner of Dorset Capital, will join the RetailExchange.com Board of Directors.
RetailExchange.com will provide an online forum that allows pre-qualified buyers and sellers to trade excess consumer goods. The business was developed in partnership with Gordon Brothers Group, the world's largest liquidator of excess retail inventories. During 1999, Boston-based Gordon Brothers facilitated sales of more than $5 billion dollars of consumer goods on behalf of its retail clients.
"By partnering with Gordon Brothers, we've insured the quality of our trading base," said RetailExchange.com Chief Executive Officer, Kenneth Frieze. "Gordon Brothers has been moving excess merchandise for nearly a century. Their domain expertise, reputation, and industry relationships are simply unmatched. Additionally, through the investment by ICG, Dorset Capital, and Castile Ventures, we now have access to some of the brightest minds in the retail, technology and business-to-business e-commerce world."
"The market opportunity is both enormous and a win/win for industry participants," added Mark Lotke, Managing Director of Internet Capital Group. "RetailExchange.com will enable thousands of manufacturers to efficiently dispose of excess retail inventory while protecting existing channels of distribution. Also, as a market maker within the Internet Capital network, RetailExchange.com will have access to cutting-edge technology, operational support, and strategic expertise."
"RetailExchange.com replicates the real-world negotiation process that buyers and sellers of excess inventory normally engage in," stated Gordon Brothers Principal and RetailExchange.com Chief Operating Officer, Steve Goldberger. "Sellers of excess goods can offer their merchandise to a worldwide community of buyers, thereby increasing their chances of maximizing recoveries. Buyers seeking opportunistic deals to boost margins will benefit from being exposed to a greatly expanded universe of first quality merchandise."
About RetailExchange.com
Based in Boston, RetailExchange.com is positioned to be the leading online business-to-business marketplace for the exchange of excess consumer products. Leveraging an intimate understanding of the retail industry, RetailExchange.com is specifically designed to meet the needs of retailers and manufacturers of excess consumer products.
RetailExchange.com will provide the support services and functionality necessary to enable buyers and sellers to independently and confidentially negotiate the exchange of goods in an online marketplace. Buyers and sellers will have the flexibility to list and search products according to their specific needs.
RetailExchange.com plans to launch its website on February 14, 2000 with an initial focus on women's apparel and home goods categories. Subsequent category rollouts will immediately take place for men's and children's apparel, domestics, sporting goods, toys and hardware.
About Internet Capital Group
Internet Capital Group is an Internet holding company actively engaged in business-to-business e-commerce through a network of Partner Companies. It provides operational assistance, capital support, expertise, and a strategic network of business relationships intended to maximize the long-term market potential of more than 45 business-to-business e-commerce partner companies.
About Gordon Brothers
Founded in 1903, Gordon Brothers works with the most prestigious retailers in North America and Europe providing inventory and real estate disposition, equity and debt financing and strategic assessments. The company recently managed more than 5,000 stores for its client base, converting over $5 billion worth of inventory and other assets into cash for retailers across the world. Gordon Brothers has offices in Boston, New York, Chicago and London.
About Dorset Capital
Dorset Capital is a consumer-focused private equity firm that invests in leading growth companies with superior business models in the following sectors: specialty retail, direct marketing, electronic commerce, restaurants, branded consumer products, consumer services and distribution. Dorset Capital's differentiated base of limited partners is comprised of prominent institutions as well as CEOs and founders of many of America's leading consumer companies.
About Castile Ventures
Castile Ventures, formed in February, 1999, is a seed and early stage venture capital firm investing in innovative Data Networking, Telecommunications and Internet enterprises. Castile is backed by prominent institutional investors, including Brinson Partners, Crossroads, Forstmann-Leff, Frank Russell and New York Life and provides entrepreneurs access to its founders' first-hand industry knowledge, operating expertise, technical insight, contacts and experience.
SOURCE RetailExchange.com
/CONTACT: Retail Media Contacts - Stacy Berns or Stacy Roth,
212-850-5600; or Internet Media Contact - Adam Sohn, 212-697-7977, all for
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