Thursday December 17, 3:57 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: ConnectInc.com
Multi-State EMall Grows as Home Depot's
Maintenance Warehouse Subsidiary Taps ConnectInc.com for OBI
Solution
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Dec. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- ConnectInc.com (Nasdaq: CNKT - news) today announced
Maintenance Warehouse has extended its e-business strategy to participate as a supplier of goods and services to the
Multi-State EMall, a web-based procurement initiative led by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Maintenance Warehouse's
participation in the EMall is facilitated by an OBI-enabled e-commerce solution provided by ConnectInc.com. Maintenance
Warehouse is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Home Depot.
''The EMall team is very pleased to be working with ConnectInc.com as a provider of OBI-compliant solutions for our
growing list of supplier partners,'' said John Harrison, Supplier Coordinator for the EMall initiative. ''Their development team
has worked quickly to get a substantial portion of the Maintenance Warehouse e-business catalog connected via OBI to the
EMall, and we're already in active testing with them.''
Currently housed in Massachusetts for the pilot phase, the EMall will connect requisitioners from 6 states to a host of suppliers
in many commodity areas. Suppliers on EMall are required to have Web-based, business-to-business catalogs which comply
with the OBI (Open Buying on the Internet) specification. In implementing the Maintenance Warehouse catalogs,
ConnectInc.com has aggressively joined the list of solution partners proving to suppliers they can bring up a successful,
OBI-compliant system quickly.
ConnectInc.com's president and CEO Craig Norris commented, ''We are particularly enthusiastic to be participating as an
OBI solution and services provider to the EMall. After demonstrating our abilities to get suppliers such as Maintenance
Warehouse up and running quickly, we're looking forward to the anticipated growth of OBI-enabled projects, and the
continued adoption of Open Commerce Frameworks which form the foundation of our strategy.''
About the Multi-State EMall
The EMall is designed to test a number of hypotheses in the area of government-to-business electronic commerce, and report
its findings to partner and observer states by mid-1999, before proceeding to the next phase. Among the key goals is to test the
viability of OBI as a business and technical model for public sector commodities procurement. A notable feature of the OBI
model is that it permits suppliers to enable their companies to participate in buyer-driven business-to-business electronic
commerce while retaining all the branding and end-user features of their retail catalog sites that differentiate them from
competitors. According to the EMall Pilot Team, suppliers who have stated their intention to go live in December and January
on the EMall include Boise-Cascade, CompuCom, Dell, Gateway, Maintenance Warehouse, Nashua Corporation, Office
Depot, VWR Scientific, and Xerox. EMall partner states include Idaho, New York, South Dakota, Texas, and Utah, with
nearly a dozen other states closely observing the pilot progress through regular updates.
About ConnectInc.com
ConnectInc.com (formerly known as CONNECT, Inc.) provides comprehensive software solutions and services to enable
Internet-based electronic commerce and build the ''Connected Corporation'' from any link in the emerging network supply
chain. ConnectInc.com's webtime-driven professional services assist ''connected corporations'' to build open, multi-vendor
e-business solutions that allow them to compete effectively in the digital economy. For more information, telephone
800-262-2638 or access the ConnectInc.com World Wide Web site at connectinc.com.
About Maintenance Warehouse
As a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Home Depot, Maintenance Warehouse is a direct supplier more than 10,000 products,
including commercial janitorial, communications, tools, appliances, electrical, lighting, irrigation, plumbing, HVAC, hardware,
and other MRO materials for professional facilities maintenance and support. Prior to this year's launch of an Internet based
e-commerce initiative (www.mwh.com), Maintenance Warehouse marketed and sold its products exclusively through a 1,500+
page printed catalog, supported by a telephone and fax-based customer service. Today, Maintenance Warehouse is expanding
its vision as an e-business company by leveraging its on-line catalog to access new markets in the government and commercial
sectors, build new customer relationships, and improve overall customer service.
Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this news release are forward-looking statements
that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking
statements. Potential risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, those mentioned in the Company's 1997 Annual Report
on Form 10-K and the quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, 1998, June 30, 1998 and
September 30, 1998, and in particular the Company's ability to implement its revised business model focused on software
services, acceptance by the marketplace of the Company's services and the Company's ability to implement its revised business
model with its existing cash resources.
SOURCE: ConnectInc.com
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