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Technology Stocks : RiddellSports.com (AMEX:RDL) (NASDAQ:DBCC) JV -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jack Hartmann who wrote (14)	12/26/1999 11:01:00 PM
From: Jack Hartmann	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16

12/02/99 09:49 Riddell Sports Announces Launch of Two New Web Sites; Varsity.com and Riddell.com NEW YORK, Dec. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Riddell Sports Inc. (Amex: RDL) announced today that it has launched two new web sites, Varsity.com and Riddell.com. Varsity.com (http://www.varsity.com), is the Company's community-based web site with an e-commerce element. It will provide up-to-date content for participants in extracurricular activities, with the initial launch focusing on cheerleaders and their coaches. The content will enhance basic skills and enable participants to share similar interests with other members of the cheerleading community. The site will provide step-by-step instructional tips and techniques, bulletin boards and celebrity chats, as well as information on health and fitness, beauty, music, entertainment and other topics of interest. A special feature of the site is the ability to post a public squad home page and the capability to communicate in a private fashion between squad members and their coach. The Company's strategy is to roll out individual web sites for a variety of extracurricular activities in addition to cheerleading. There are an estimated 20 million young men and women who participate in team sports, such as football, baseball, softball and soccer, in junior and senior high schools, colleges and recreational youth leagues, and another 10 million participants in other extracurricular activities, such as cheerleading, dance and band. The Company plans to add sites over the upcoming year especially designed for football and other team sports at the high school and college level, as well as web sites tailored to the needs of youth sports players below 14 years of age. David Mauer, Riddell's President and C.E.O. stated, "We believe that the community of extracurricular participants such as cheerleaders, football players and other team sports members, often find their participation in these activities to be a significant defining element of their lives. By providing content that "speaks" to the participant's extracurricular activity, we expect to maintain their interest and enthusiasm for our sites. Importantly, our sites will become the place where team members can converse with other members of the community and "power" the web sites with their own submissions and viewpoints. Our plans recognize that each extracurricular activity represents a unique community of interests, and that the needs of high school and college players and coaches are quite different than those at the youth level." Mr. Mauer went on to say, "We believe that the content and community building aspects of our web sites will enhance our existing relationships and help us build new relationships with coaches and participants in various extracurricular activities. The Internet will also provide us with another way to rapidly disseminate new product information and promote our camps, clinics, competitions and performance events. Our goal is to create web sites for these discrete, highly focused communities, that when aggregated, will represent a large audience of school leaders and trend setters. This is a highly desirable demographic not only for our products but for advertisers and third party marketers of a variety of goods and services". Riddell.com Riddell.com (http://www.riddell.com) is the Company's on-line store for its successful sports collectible line of products licensed by the National Football League, Major League Baseball, NASCAR (and various professional drivers) and the NCAA. Riddell.com will also promote a unique concept -- the Custom Shop -- where sports fans can personalize mini helmets for gift-giving occasions such as graduation, birthdays and Father's Day. The Custom Shop will offer a product line that cannot readily be offered in a traditional retail environment. The Riddell.com site is also a natural extension of the Company's retail collectible strategy. If a fan lives in an area away from his favorite team it is often difficult to find that team's merchandise in local stores. Riddell.com will make it more possible for a fan to find merchandise from his/her favorite team no matter where they live. Tom Clark, Sr. V.P., Consumer Products for Riddell commented "The new Riddell on-line store makes it easy for sports fans to find what they are looking for in a simple to navigate, interactive format. By marketing all of our products together, with the ability to view all of a team's products with a few simple mouse clicks, we believe that collectibility will be greatly enhanced." Mr. Clark continued, "Our Custom Shop is expected to generate an enthusiastic response from our consumers and we expect that this area will be expanded with new offerings over the next few months. The entire on-line store format lends itself to an expansion of our product line that would be difficult to achieve otherwise." Riddell Sports Inc. provides institutional sporting goods and school spirit products and services to educational and recreational organizations through its national, direct sales force. The Company is the leading manufacturer and reconditioner of football protective equipment and the leading supplier of products and services to the school spirit industry. The Company's consumer products group markets miniature and full-size helmets for collectors and licenses the Riddell and MacGregor trademarks for use on athletic footwear and apparel. This release contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ significantly from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. The factors that may cause such differences include, but are not limited to, the Company's ability to: (i) generate meaningful interest in its community or commerce web sites, (ii) provide updated content or obtain content from the users of its web sites, (iii) launch additional web sites for other extracurricular activities, (iv) offer new product lines or generate advertising, sales or other revenues from its web sites and (v) adapt to rapid changes and general uncertainties relating to the relatively new and continually evolving business of electronic commerce, as well as general economic conditions and other business factors. Have to check these sites out. Jack