Advant-e Announces Year 2000 Performance for GroceryEC.com; Over $229 Million Worth of Purchase Orders Processed.

Business Editors

DAYTON, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 8, 2001

Advant-e Corporation (OTCBB:AVEE) is pleased to announce the year 2000 performance of GroceryEC.com, its first vertical industry business-to-business Web-based e-commerce portal.

GroceryEC.com is a Web-based system for allowing manufacturers and brokers in the grocery industry to conduct electronic commerce with grocery retailers. GroceryEC.com allows its customers to send and receive electronic purchase orders, invoices, price changes, item information, and promotional contracts via a Web-based service.

GroceryEC.com was developed and put in production in 1999. At the end of 1999, GroceryEC.com supported one retailer (Kroger) and had 108 customers.

In 2000, GroceryEC.com added support for 18 additional b2b retailer implementations including Albertson's, American Wholesale Grocers, C&S Grocers, Dillon, Fleming, Fred Meyer, Meijer, Ralphs, RichFood, Safeway, Smart & Final, Supervalu, Wakefern, Walgreens, and Winn Dixie. These implementations account for the e-commerce initiatives of 29 grocery chains.

Also during 2000, GroceryEC.com expanded its customer base by adding 683 customers including American Bottling Company/7up, Archway Cookies, Armour Swift-Eckrich, Ben & Jerry's, Bil-Jac Foods, Blue Diamond Growers, Border Foods, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cal-Maine Foods, Campbell Soup Company, Coca-Cola Bottling Co., Colgate-Palmolive Company, ConAgra Grocery Products, Crown Equipment Corp., Dads Products, Dolly Madison Bakery, Earthgrains, Edy's Grand Ice Cream, Faygo Beverages, Frito Lay, Good Earth Teas, H.J. Heinz, Haagen-Dazs, Hillshire Farm & Kahn's, Hormel Foods Corp., Interstate Brands, Johnsonville Sausage, Keebler Company, Kellogg Sales, Co., Kimberly-Clark Corp., Kraft Foods, Morton Salt, Nabisco, Nestle USA, Otis Spunkmeyer, Pepperidge Farm, Pepsi Bottling Group, Ralston Purina, Royal Crown Bottling Company, The Clorox Sales Company, Unilever Home & Personal Care, United Dairy Farmers, and Wise Foods Inc.

The customers added in 2000 accounted for 1,022 trading partnerships (vendors using GroceryEC.com for multiple retailers) with over $229,000,000 worth of purchase orders processed in 2000.

Commenting on the results, Jason K. Wadzinski, President and CEO of Advant-e, stated, "We are very pleased with our results in 2000. Although GroceryEC.com is a relatively new service in the grocery industry, we are pleased that so many brand-name customers have chosen our service to augment their current electronic commerce systems, or as their entire b2b solution. Given that about half of our customers don't use GroceryEC.com to process their orders because they are integrated with their current systems, we've managed to process almost a quarter billion dollars worth of purchase orders through the system for small and medium size vendors in this industry."

Edward Ross, Information Systems Project Manager at Blue Diamond Growers, commented, "We were looking for a low cost and efficient mechanism to comply with our customers' EDI demands and GroceryEC.com has worked for us. We had one resource working part time with EDICT Systems (GroceryEC.com) and were able to implement this solution in hours. The end user training took only 30 minutes and they were comfortable enough to process orders without any assistance. We no longer incur any non-compliance fees from customers and are processing PO's and invoices through GroceryEC.com with 16 customers."

Darlene Taglione, IS Manager at Silver Springs Citrus, added, "We are very happy with the GroceryEC.com solution. When Silver Springs Citrus first began using GroceryEC.com, it was with the intention to only use the system for a few months until our Y2K efforts were completed. This quickly changed. GroceryEC.com is a very cost effective and responsive to our needs. This one solution allows the IS Department time to work on and to have the budget dollars available for other projects. Since all EDI upgrades, changes, and issues are handled by GroceryEC.com, I cannot begin to tell you how nice it is to basically call GroceryEC.com and leave any questions at their doorstep. They have provided great customer service and a solution that is extremely easy to use. Every software package has a learning curve and GroceryEC.com's learning curve is insignificant. Basically if your users can check their e-mail, they will be successful. I would strongly recommend this solution."

Advant-e, via its wholly owned subsidiary EDICT Systems, Inc., is a provider of Business-to-Business Electronic Commerce products and services. Advant-e specializes in horizontal transaction services via EnterpriseEC(R), an Internet value added network, and within specific vertical industries via Web-based "vortals" including www.GroceryEC.com and www.MfgEC.com.

In addition to Internet and Web-based e-commerce solutions, Advant-e also provides e-commerce integration and bar coding applications via its FORMULA_ONE(R) translation software and Bar Code Label Modules.

Year end financial results for Advant-e will be released when they become available, but not later than March 31, 2001.

Additional information about the company can be found at www.Advant-e.com and www.EdictSystems.com or by contacting the company at 800/443-3428 or investor relations at 972/233-0300. The company's email is [e-mail].

The information in this news release includes certain forward-looking statements that are based upon assumptions that in the future may prove not to have been accurate and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including statements to the future financial performance of the company. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in its forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations or any of its forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Factors that could cause results to differ include, but are not limited to, successful performance of internal plans, product development and acceptance, the impact of competitive services and pricing, or general economic risks and uncertainties.