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Egarden.com - Bloom Time
New York, Aug 10, 2000 (123Jump via COMTEX) -- Egarden.com, a
business-to-business (B2B) e-marketplace for the global lawn and garden products
industry, recently launched an online wholesale store containing more than 26
product categories and 3,000-plus stock keeping units (SKUs). The wholesale
store complements the site's existing services - online auctions and content -
facilitating e-commerce among industry participants like small and medium size
manufacturers, independent retailers, specialty stores, contractors and
landscapers. The addition of the new store makes Egarden.com one of the first
all-inclusive B2B sites focused on the lawn and garden industry. With its early
mover advantage and healthy fundamentals, the company is now positioned to grow
rapidly and generate increased earnings for itself as well as its parent
company, US Home & Garden (NASDAQ: USHG).
Egarden.com's chief objective is to bring together buyers and sellers of lawn
and garden merchandise and provide them with new, complementary supply and
distribution channels. Notably, Egarden.com's parent, US Home & Garden, is a
leading manufacturer and marketer of a broad range of consumer lawn and garden
products, marketing its products through most large national home improvement
and mass merchant retailers. This gives Egarden.com a significant edge over its
competitors and helps in devising sharper and more focused development
strategies. Consequently, drawing on its management's in-depth industry
experience, Egarden.com is emerging as a leading online community in this
business.
The Egarden.com site is currently divided into three main areas. The e-commerce
functions are the wholesale store, where buyers and sellers can conduct
transactions amongst themselves, and the auction market, where suppliers can
sell off excess inventory. To support these functions, the site provides
industry-related content, which enables members to access news, a calendar of
events and other services. Moreover, later this year, the company plans to
launch individual co-op "rooms" where co-op members and retailers can purchase
products through the Egarden.com marketplace.
Egarden.com's primary service, focused on the global lawn and garden and outdoor
accessory industries, offers product categories that represent about $73 billion
in wholesale sales. Industry participants can access a broad range of products,
such as barbecue grills, bird feeders, fencing and edging, flower pots and
planters, garden tools and supplies, irrigation equipment, landscaping supplies
and equipment, outdoor furniture and accessories and live goods. Egarden.com
will expand its offerings by adding other product categories to its
e-marketplace in the future, allowing retailers to source and purchase a greater
percentage of their total product offerings through its marketplace.
Significantly, several large industry-leading suppliers have agreed to join
Egarden.com's B2B marketplace. The company's worldwide members now have access
to products from Andersons Processing Group (NASDAQ: ANDE), a leading supplier of
exclusive branded and high quality fertilizer products and C&S Products Co., a
pioneer in the wild bird feeding market. Other suppliers include Germania Seed
Co., which specializes in high quality flower and vegetable seeds, Henri Studio
Inc., the world's largest designer and manufacturer of original cast stone
fountains and garden decor and Raindrip Inc., a leading manufacturer of micro
irrigation products. Also, through its strategic alliance with GardenTrend Inc.,
Egarden.com plans to facilitate the buyer and supplier registration process and
anticipates that over 500 individual suppliers with more than 100,000 total
SKUs, will be listed for sale on its marketplace by the end of fiscal year 2001.
In another strategic move, Egarden.com has entered into global long-term
e-commerce agreements with TruServ Corporation, Do it Best Corp. and Ace
Hardware Corporation, the country's three largest hardware cooperatives in the
do-it-yourself industry. These exclusive alliances provide Egarden.com access to
18,500 retail stores together with the registration of leading suppliers. This
has resulted in Egarden.com aggregating the critical mass of customers necessary
to position itself as a leading e-commerce site on a global basis. Further, the
company has commenced a marketing campaign targeting over 47,000 independent
retailers, 400,000 commercial landscapers and building contractors and 25,000
vendors in the lawn and garden industry, to build upon its existing base of
co-op customers.
An indication of Egarden.com's growing brand equity and burgeoning position is
its selection as one of the most promising and competitive players in the
recently announced Forbes Magazine's first annual "Best of the Web: B2B guide."
Forbes' judging criteria included corporate strategy, execution, financial
staying power and overall website. Further, while its parent has so far funded
its development, Egarden.com has retained Wit SoundView Corporation, one of the
largest online investment-banking groups focused exclusively on the Internet and
technology sectors, to advise on its capital structure and future financing.
This suggests that Egarden.com is looking to move up to the next level in its
growth trajectory and accelerate expansion plans. Hence, given its established
market position and strong strategic alliances, revenues are expected to jump
significantly in the next two years.
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