Apropos Retail Management Systems Releases Fully Integrated Apropos E-Comm Retail Suite.

Business Editors

Retail Systems 2000

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 17, 2000

Informix-Powered End-to-End Solution for

Full Service Retailers and E-tailers

First three Apropos customers on-line with Apropos E-Comm to

complement existing Apropos Retail Management suite;

Affiliate Selling a big plus

Apropos(R) Retail Management Systems, the leading provider of fully integrated software systems for chain retail management for small and mid-size

chain Retailers and E-tailers, and Informix(R) Corporation (NASDAQ:IFMX), the technology leader in the software infrastructure for the i.Economy, announced today at Retail Systems 2000, running April 17-19, the release and rollout of the Apropos E-Comm suite of products, available for demonstration at the Informix booth, No. 432. Based on Informix technology, Apropos E-Comm is fully integrated with the market-leading Apropos Retail Management Systems suite to deliver the industry's most complete and off-the-shelf solution for brick-and-mortar retailers who wish to extend their businesses to the Internet. Existing click-and-mortar retailers can easily migrate to Apropos E-Comm via an off-the-shelf solution designed for pure play Internet retailers.

By utilizing the retailer's existing Web site design, Apropos is able to demonstrate the straightforward process of converting to Apropos E-Comm. As a result, early adopters of Apropos E-Comm converted their Web sites into the Apropos suite in approximately three days. The first three customers to go live on Apropos E-Comm include:

    --  Diver's Direct, the largest online supplier of diving products
        and services, and the operator of four large dive and water
        sport stores in Florida, has migrated their online site to
        Apropos E-Comm, and is doing a thriving Web business at
        www.diversdirect.com. An established E-tailer, Diver's Direct
        was able to convert their site, including an overhaul of old
        products and addition of new products, and go live with their
        Web site in less than 30 days. According to Steve Knipschild,
        Webmaster and director of Online Services at Diver's Direct,
        Apropos E-Comm has "great functionality, good flexibility in
        the design templates, is easy to implement and very user
        friendly."

    --  Bright Beginnings, a women's and children's clothing chain
        based in Austin, TX, is live online using Apropos E-Comm at
        www.bestdressedkids.com.

    --  Peekay Inc., of Auburn, WA, has several sites up and running
        on Apropos E-Comm, including their own corporate site and
        several Affiliate sites. These Affiliate sites leveraged the
        targeted Affiliates functionality within Apropos E-Comm to
        bring up their sites in less than a week.

"Unlike some of our competitors, we don't feel that the underlying E-Commerce engine should dictate the graphics, layout, or look and feel of our customers' Web sites," said Kent McNall, president of Apropos Retail Management Systems. "Graphic design is not our business - our customers have full control of the creative side of their Web businesses, just as they have full control of the design of their store locations."

Like all Apropos products, Apropos E-Comm is powered by Informix's software infrastructure solutions for the Internet. Explained Kenneth Leung, director of retail industry marketing at Informix Corporation, "Apropos' E-Commerce solution provides small to medium size retailers the means to go click and mortar quickly. The combination of the Foundation.2000(tm) platform and the Linux operating system provides retailers with a consistent architecture for all aspects of their operations."

With the release of E-Comm, Apropos has taken great strides towards realizing its vision of one stop shopping for today's chain retailer. Apropos E-Comm fulfills a critical industry need for a fully integrated solution that handles all customer transactions - in store, via phone or mail order, and now E-commerce via the Internet. These transactions are handled seamlessly by the Apropos system, wherever they are initiated, creating the efficiency E-tailers will need to stay competitive and profitable.

Added McNall, "The first thing our customers can count on is being able to manage their Web store like any other store. If they want to put every product on their Web site on sale for 20% off, they can do it using the same software they would use to put their Cincinnati store on sale. The second thing our customers can count on is being able to fulfill the orders they take via the Web, using the great order fulfillment software we've had in Apropos for the past six years."

The company has taken a unique approach with its E-Comm product. "We saw E-tailers really dealing with E-Commerce as an island of business - separate and disconnected from their main operations," stated Blaine Whittle, Apropos' director of Value Emergent Technologies. "Instead of their merchandisers being in charge of the presentation and availability of their products over the Internet, third parties were performing those kinds of Web site updates. Instead of a smooth order flow into the retailers fulfillment systems, orders were being emailed from this Web Island to the fulfillment center - very inefficient."

Apropos believes that successful chain retailers want and need an attractive, functional, and reliable E-commerce business site that is also efficiently and tightly integrated with their operations and fulfillment. In developing its E-Commerce management system, Apropos first focused on enabling seamless integration throughout the supply chain, and then built sophisticated Web functionality to satisfy its customers' evolving needs.

The Apropos E-Comm suite is comprised of three components: E-Catalog, E-Cart, and E-Connect.

    --  Apropos E-Catalog provides an extremely easy-to-use interface
        that allows the retailer to design the overall structure of
        its Web site, including the layout and content of their
        E-Catalog. It provides a user-friendly way to add the extended
        content required for the Web to their existing inventory items
        - pictures, graphics, descriptions, links, and other
        Web-specific content.

    --  Apropos E-Cart provides shopping cart functionality, including
        electronic payment interfaces, to the Web site. It controls
        the collection of the information necessary to complete a
        sales transaction once a customer has created a shopping cart,
        and also provides the extended functionality related to the
        cart itself.

    --  Apropos E-Connect provides all the interfaces between the
        Apropos system and the E-Commerce components. E-Connect
        leverages Informix technology for easy replication of data
        between the customer's office and the Web server, wherever
        that might be hosted.

Apropos E-Comm utilizes the power and technology resources of both Linux and Windows NT. The E-Comm applications run on a Windows NT system, while all of the site data resides in the underlying Informix technology running on the Linux operating system.

"We wanted to use the right operating system platforms and tools in the right place," added Whittle. "Our combined solution is very scalable and reliable. Windows provides the application platform we need to offer a great feature set, while Linux provides the mission-critical reliability we need for high availability and data replication with an enterprise-class software infrastructure from Informix."

About Apropos Retail Management Systems

Founded in 1989, Apropos Retail Management Systems has become the leading supplier of advanced technology retail software and system solutions to the growing market of small to mid-size chains, from 5 to 250+ store locations. Apropos provides complete software systems for growing chain retailers who want to be more profitable and productive. Apropos is a suite of retail applications built on the advanced SQL database environment. Apropos provides a complete, one-stop solution from POS to Back Office to E-Commerce to Accounting and Data Warehousing - all built on the most advanced technology, and tied together with full professional services. For more information, contact Apropos at [e-mail] or visit our Website at www.aproposretail.com.

About Informix

Based in Menlo Park, CA, Informix Software is the technology leader in software infrastructure solutions for the Internet.. Informix is the first and only company to integrate e-commerce and business intelligence on a true Internet infrastructure. We provide a complete, fast and simple way to bring businesses to the Web, personalize content management, and analyze information real-time. This, with our highly scalable Web engines and media asset management capabilities, gives our customers a unique competitive advantage. For more information, contact the sales office nearest you or visit our Web site at www.informix.com.

(c)2000 Informix Corporation. All rights reserved. The following are trademarks of Informix Corporation or its affiliates, one or more of which may be registered in the U.S. or other jurisdictions: Informix(R)and Foundation.2000(tm).

The following is a trademark of Apropos Retail Management Systems: Apropos(R).