ESCALATE MERCHANT SERVICE SLASHES TIME TO MARKET

Egreetings Network, Quokka Sports and Turoturo.com Launch E-commerce in Weeks not Months

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.— December 6, 1999 —Escalate, Inc., the first E-commerce Service Provider (ESP), today announced the availability of the Escalate Merchant Service, a complete, end-to-end e-commerce management service for companies that wish to become online merchants faster and with less investment than was previously possible.

To date, companies spend millions of dollars and over half a year to build, test and deploy their e-commerce systems. The Escalate Merchant Service enables businesses to introduce or enhance their online stores and merchandising capabilities in as little as three weeks, at a fraction of the typical cost.

With the Escalate Merchant Service, online merchants can focus on branding and store design, merchandising and product assortments—creating a superior customer experience; Escalate takes care of all the rest. The service offers online merchandising tools, product sourcing, a vast supplier network, and automated back-office operations such as fulfillment and inventory management. "We understand that it's important for merchants to retain control of their brand, customers, and customer experience," said Keng Lim, president and chief executive officer of Escalate. "Therefore, we have designed our service to give merchants maximum control and flexibility in all of these aspects."

The Escalate Merchant Service offers a single integrated e-commerce management solution delivered through the Escalate Commerce Network. The Merchant Service consists of:

• e-Customer Experience Management: complete customer experience management including seamless integration of e-commerce into existing web content, personalized shopping, contextual selling, and coordinated customer service.
• e-Store Management: fully branded storefront design, convenient store management, a patent-pending interactive point-of-sale system, and integrated product management tools.
• e-Order Management: highly scalable and redundant online transaction processing infrastructure to support e-commerce order processing, order management, and fulfillment management.
• e-Account Management: advanced billing and reporting tools to generate invoices and monitor sales activity; business intelligence tools to analyze the store performance and merchandising activities.
• e-Merchandise Management: effective selection and maintenance of product assortments, while optimizing purchasing and inventory decisions based on availability and cost.
• e-Supplier Relationship Management: establish and maintain strategic, value-added relationships with suppliers across a broad range of product categories, and service providers to streamline fulfillment and customer service.

In addition to these services, Escalate has a team of experts in online retailing, merchandising, supplier management, and logistics to assist companies with their e-commerce initiatives.

"The Escalate Merchant Service delivered more than an end-to-end e-commerce solution," said Georgina Lee-Chua, co-founder of Turoturo.com. "It also offered us access to Escalate's experts in merchandising, customer service, and supply chain management. They became our strategic ESP."

"To become a gift destination that really meets busy consumers' needs, we wanted to make it easy to select and send the perfect gift," said Gordon M. Tucker, chief executive officer of Egreetings Network. "Egreetings.com visitors can now choose their free digital greetings and view a selection of appropriate gifts all on the same page. The Escalate Merchant Service offered us the flexibility to put commerce alongside greeting opportunities."

For details of the Egreetings Network, Quokka Sports, and Turoturo.com e-commerce offerings powered by Escalate, please see today's related Escalate news releases.

About Escalate

Escalate, Inc. will significantly change the way all e-businesses establish and innovate their ongoing e-commerce operations. As the first e-commerce service provider (ESP), Escalate radically changes the speed, accessibility, and economies of delivering high-impact e-commerce. Through its flagship e-commerce network, the Escalate Commerce Network, Escalate provides an end-to-end e-commerce management system with a vast product catalog, an integrated supplier network, and a high-quality service provider network all in a single integrated solution. By subscribing to the Escalate Commerce Network, companies that are looking to add e-commerce to their businesses—including high traffic Internet sites, retailers, cataloguers, and sites with existing e-commerce capabilities—will be able to deploy high-impact e-commerce faster and with less investment than was previously possible.

Representative Escalate customers include such high profile e-businesses as Egreetings and Quokka Sports. A privately held company with over 100 employees, Escalate has raised more than $30 million in working capital from leading venture capital firms including Accel Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, and the Barksdale Group. Headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, Escalate serves Europe and Asia via offices in Paris and Tokyo. For more information visit Escalate's website at http://www.escalate.com.

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Escalate™ and Escalate to Market™ are trademarks of Escalate, Inc. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Lance Mercereau
Burson-Marsteller
415.591.4000
lance_mercereau@sfo.bm.com

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