Arrow Joins the eConnections Network: Building Tomorrow's Supply Chain Today.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 17, 2000

eConnections today announced a new strategic partnership with Arrow Electronics, Inc., the $10 billion distributor based in Melville, New York, exponentially increasing the power of the first intelligent business to business hub dedicated to the electronics industry.

eConnections represents a new model for supply chain management, combining cutting-edge technology with proven process design, streamlining the complex process of bringing a product to market. It gives supply chain partners integrated, independent, and custom-tailored systems, improving communication, cutting costs, and building margins.

The Arrow alliance, combined with a similar alliance with Avnet, Inc., announced in March 2000, dramatically enhances those capabilities. It links eConnections with the two largest electronic component distributors in the world, along with their over 1,000 suppliers, 1 million SKUs, and over $3 billion of available inventory representing virtually every technology available at the component or system level. More importantly, it provides added value for customers and suppliers alike, allowing the typical OEM to network with over 80% of its supply chain partners.

"We know first hand how tough the business is these days," Rob Rodin, eConnection's chairman and chief executive officer, said. "The pace keeps getting faster, while product life cycle shrinks, and new product introductions soar. The battle for supply, markets, and talent has gone global, and companies are learning to compete supply chain versus supply chain. eConnections creates a new edge for this new world -- the power to collaborate, coordinate, and compete, around the world around the clock."

Built by a team with deep domain expertise, wired to a technology infrastructure that has twice been named the no. 1 b2b web site in the world by Advertising Age, eConnections' provides a centralized command and control process to reduce the cost and time companies spend managing their supply-chain. The eConnections engine is driven by a set of "best practice" rules which are fine-tuned according to the profile of each participating member. Currently capable of executing over 1 million transactions a day in multiple languages, it gives customers the tools to profile and coordinate product selections, bills of materials, forecasts, and production requirements, day by day, supply-chain by supply-chain, across local and global markets.

Other eConnections solutions support a product's entire life cycle. Services include ENEN.com, The Education News and Entertainment Network, a web-based broadcast studio that reaches over 485,000 registered design engineers in 79 countries worldwide; @Once, a 24/7 manned customer service and live Web assistance center; and SpotMarket.com, an auction and exchange system for electronic components.

"Arrow's significant financial investment in eConnections signals our commitment to using the supply chain tools and capabilities of eConnections wherever they can add value to our customers and suppliers in the supply chain," said Stephen P. Kaufman, chairman and chief executive officer of Arrow. "We are delighted to be a strategic partner with Rob Rodin, his colleagues at eConnections, and Avnet, Inc., as we work together to further maximize the benefits of the Internet for our industry."

"eConnections solves real problems for real people throughout the industry, using a tested process design and proven infrastructure," Roy Vallee, chairman and chief executive officer of Avnet, agreed. "It is strong enough to harness the full potential of the Internet today, and flexible enough to stay on the cutting edge tomorrow, growing as its partners grow."