Beginning Today, New York-Area Consumers Can Name Their Own Price For Groceries.STAMFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 1, 1999-- Priceline.com WebHouse Club Allows Consumers To Cut Their Grocery Bills By Up To One-Half More Than 650 New York-Area Stores Participating: A&P, ShopRite, Stop & Shop, Pathmark, Waldbaums, King Kullen King Kullen Grocery Co. is a supermarket chain with 46 locations on Long Island and the New York City borough of Staten Island. King Kullen is recognized by the Smithsonian Institution as America's first supermarket, as the first location was opened by Michael J. , D'Agostino, FoodTown, Gristede's, Super Food Mart and The Food Emporium Pre-Launch Generates Record Weekend Site Traffic At Priceline.com The priceline.com WebHouse Club, a revolutionary new service that allows consumers to name their own price for groceries and save up to 50% every time they shop, is now open for business in the New York metropolitan area New York–Northern New Jersey–Long Island is the most populous metropolitan area in the United States and the third most populous in the world, after Tokyo and Mexico City. . Following a pre-launch weekend that brought record traffic to priceline.com's Web site (www.priceline.com), the WebHouse Club launched today with a TV, radio and newspaper ad blitz Noun 1. ad blitz - an organized program of advertisements ad campaign, advertising campaign crusade, campaign, cause, drive, effort, movement - a series of actions advancing a principle or tending toward a particular end; "he supported populist campaigns"; featuring William Shatner <noinclude></noinclude> William Alan Shatner (born on March 22, 1931) is a Canadian actor who gained fame for playing Captain James Tiberius Kirk, captain of the starship USS Enterprise and millions of flyers in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , New Jersey and Connecticut papers. The WebHouse Club is a privately held affiliate licensee licensee n. a person given a license by government or under private agreement. (See: license, licensor) LICENSEE. One to whom a license has been given. 1 M. Q. & S. 699 n. of priceline.com. Customers access the service by going to priceline.com's Web site on the Internet (www.priceline.com) and selecting the WebHouse Club from the various name-your-price services available to them (leisure airline tickets, hotel rooms, home mortgage and new cars). Over the weekend, visits to the priceline.com Web site were up almost 20% over typical weekend site activity. "We expect that as WebHouse Club members visit priceline.com each week to name their own price for groceries, they will take the opportunity to explore and use the many other name-your-own-price services priceline.com offers," said Daniel H. Schulman, president and COO of priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN PCLN Priceline.com (stock abbreviation, AMEX) ). The WebHouse Club allows consumers to name prices that are lower than those available in any grocery store or supermarket, well below even sale and warehouse club prices. WebHouse Club members will be able to name their own prices in more than 140 leading grocery categories, including beef, chicken, soda, cereal cereal or grain Any grass yielding starchy seeds suitable for food. The most commonly cultivated cereals are wheat, rice, rye, oats, barley, corn, and sorghum. As human food, cereals are usually marketed in raw grain form or as ingredients of food products. , diapers, detergent detergent (dētûr`jənt, dĭ–), substance that aids in the removal of dirt. Detergents act mainly on the oily films that trap dirt particles. , paper products and more. To use the new service, consumers simply log onto priceline.com from their home or office computers and name their own price before they go to their favorite grocery stores. Consumers get their groceries at any of the more than 650 participating grocery stores in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut metropolitan area. Major grocery chains that are taking part in the venture include A&P, Pathmark, ShopRite, Gristede's, D'Agostino, Waldbaum's, the Food Emporium, Food Town and Super Food Mart. The WebHouse Club's New York introduction is the first phase of a national rollout that will get underway in 2000. Since it is a privately held affiliate licensee of priceline.com, WebHouse Club financial results will not be included in priceline.com's future financial statements. "Our goal is to attract more than 100,000 WebHouse Club members in 90 days," said WebHouse Club founder Jay S. Walker. "For consumers who are willing to be flexible and purchase one of their two favorite brands, the WebHouse Club can mean significant savings of up to 50% in their grocery bill every week. Smart shoppers will gladly trade five minutes on the Internet before going to their favorite store in return for these savings." "The introduction of this new service means the Internet is finally relevant to almost everyone," said Jonathan Otto Otto, Austrian archduke Otto: see Hapsburg, Otto von. , CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of the priceline WebHouse Club. "Consumers who may not have had a reason to get on the Net now have a powerful, money saving incentive. Also, the WebHouse Club is a major step forward for online grocery shopping. No waiting for a delivery van to arrive. No letting someone else select your meat and poultry poultry, domesticated fowl kept primarily for meat and eggs; including birds of the order Galliformes, e.g., the chicken, turkey, guinea fowl, pheasant, quail, and peacock; and natatorial (swimming) birds, e.g., the duck and goose. . No membership fees. And you shop where you want, at your favorite local store." How It Works To use the WebHouse Club consumers log onto priceline.com from their home or office computers before they go to the grocery store. After entering the WebHouse Club, members can select from hundreds of grocery items. After choosing their two favorite brands for each product category, they can name their own prices and find out in 60 seconds whether their prices have been accepted. Members lock in their prices by pre-paying with a credit card while they're still on-line. Before logging off, members print out a pre-paid grocery list that they can take with them to their favorite participating store. This pre-paid grocery list includes information verifying the products consumers purchased through the WebHouse Club. At the check-out counter, one swipe of a shopper's priceline WebHouse Club card completes the process. Millions Of "$10 In Free Groceries" Cards Being Distributed To introduce the WebHouse Club to shoppers, millions of free priceline WebHouse Club membership cards are being distributed to New York-area consumers. Each card (one per household) entitles its user to obtain $10 worth of free groceries at savings up to 50% below regular store prices. Shoppers can use the cards at any participating WebHouse Club grocery store. New York-area consumers can get their free WebHouse Club membership card in one of three ways: in their local newspaper, by requesting a card on the priceline.com Web site, or from their favorite participating supermarket. During the next two weeks, millions of WebHouse Club cards and information sheets will be distributed to shoppers at supermarket check-out counters. To activate the card and receive $10 worth of free half-price groceries, consumers simply enter the number found on the back of each individually numbered card the first time they log onto the WebHouse Club. William Shatner To Introduce WebHouse Club The new service is being introduced by New York-area residents through a $25 million TV, radio and newspaper advertising campaign featuring world-famous actor William Shatner. In the campaign's TV ads, Shatner uses his home PC to demonstrate how easy it is to use the WebHouse Club. WebHouse Club radio ads feature Shatner musing in off-beat ways about the prices of several household products including mouthwash mouthwash /mouth·wash/ (mouth´wosh) a solution for rinsing the mouth. mouth·wash n. A medicated liquid for cleaning the mouth and treating diseased mucous membranes. , tuna tuna or tunny, game and food fishes, the largest members of the family Scombridae (mackerel family) and closely related to the albacore and bonito. They have streamlined bodies with two fins, and five or more finlets on the back. , frozen french fries French fry n. A thin strip of potato fried in deep fat. Often used in the plural. and grape jelly jelly /jel·ly/ (jel´e) a soft substance that is coherent, tremulous, and more or less translucent; generally, a colloidal semisolid mass. . Endorsed By Leading Grocery Retailers The WebHouse Club's New York retail partners include many of the world's most successful grocery marketers. All are enthusiastic about participating in the new service. Rob Voss, WebHouse Club Senior Vice President of Merchandising and a co-founder of WalMart's Sam's Club Sam's Club is a membership-only warehouse club owned and operated by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. History The first Sam's Club opened in April 1983 in Midwest City, Oklahoma in the United States.[1] Sam's Club is named after Sam Walton. , one of retailing's most successful value-oriented innovations, described the WebHouse Club as retail history in the making. "The WebHouse Club is fast, easy and fun. You pick what you want, what you want to pay and then you pick up your groceries, often at extraordinary savings." The Web House Club Savings Process Step 1: Consumers name and print their prices For each product they want, consumers name their price and enter two or more of their favorite brands for each product category. The priceline WebHouse Club asks consumers to name at least two of their favorite brands (i.e. Duracell and Energizer, Hefty heft·y adj. heft·i·er, heft·i·est 1. Of considerable weight; heavy. 2. Rugged and powerful. See Synonyms at heavy. 3. and Glad, Brawny brawn·y adj. 1. Strong and muscular. 2. Hardened; calloused. and Bounty bounty, payment made by a government bounty, amount paid by a government for the achievement of certain economic or other goals. It often takes the form of a premium paid for the increased production or export of certain goods. , etc.). This allows the company to work with competing manufacturers to identify one that will accept lower prices named over the Internet, in order to be certain those consumers will purchase their products when they go to the store. After consumers name their price for as many items as they want, they submit their requests for consideration. Within 60 seconds, the WebHouse Club selects accepted requests and chooses one of the member's favorite brands. Prices are immediately locked-in and charged to the consumer's preferred credit card. Consumers then print out their 'Prepaid Grocery List' from their home or office computer. Step 2: Go to the store Members take their pre-paid grocery list, along with their free WebHouse Club membership card, to their favorite participating store. Items pre-paid on the Internet can be picked up at any store in the WebHouse Club network. Using their pre-paid grocery list just as they would any shopping list, members place the items in their cart. At check-out, consumers separate WebHouse Club groceries from other groceries as WebHouse Club groceries are pre-paid. One swipe of the consumer's WebHouse Club card guarantees that consumers get the prices they named on-line before they came to the store. About The priceline WebHouse Club, Inc. Based in Stamford Connecticut, the priceline WebHouse Club is the creation of Walker Digital, Inc, the intellectual property laboratory that originated the priceline.com system. The WebHouse Club is a privately held affiliate licensee of priceline.com. Priceline.com has licensed its patented business system, brand and certain technology to the WebHouse Club. In return, priceline.com will be entitled en·ti·tle tr.v. en·ti·tled, en·ti·tling, en·ti·tles 1. To give a name or title to. 2. To furnish with a right or claim to something: to ongoing royalty payments once a minimum sales threshold has been achieved and has received warrants allowing it to purchase a majority equity stake in the WebHouse Club under certain contingent conditions. Prior to the exercise of this warrant, the results of the WebHouse Club will not be included in priceline.com's financial statements. The WebHouse Club's management team consists of some of the most accomplished names in retail and grocery store innovation, including the co-founders of such successful retail ventures as Sam's Club, RockBottom Drug Stores and Catalina Marketing. The WebHouse Club recently received $65 million in first-round financing from Vulcan Ventures, Wit Capital's Arista arista (ä·riˑ·st Fund and Goldman Sachs The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., or simply Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) is one of the world's largest global investment banks. Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869, and is headquartered in the Lower Manhattan area of New York City at 85 Broad Street. . About priceline.com Priceline.com is the patented Internet pricing system Noun 1. pricing system - a system for setting prices on goods or services system - a procedure or process for obtaining an objective; "they had to devise a system that did not depend on cooperation" that enables consumers to achieve significant savings by naming their own price for airline tickets, hotel rooms, new cars, mortgages and home refinancing Refinancing An extension and/or increase in amount of existing debt. . Priceline.com presents consumer price offers to sellers who can fill as much of that guaranteed demand as they wish at price points determined by buyers. Priceline.com's "virtual" business model allows for rapid scaling using the Internet. Because the Company electronically collects consumer demand, it can fill this demand directly with sellers or by using proprietary databases. Priceline.com does not maintain or warehouse any inventories in any of its product lines. Priceline.com's business system currently sells multiple services to its customers across three distinct product categories: a travel service that offers leisure airline tickets and hotel rooms, a personal finance service that offers home mortgages, refinancing and home equity loans, and an automotive service unit that sells new cars in southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, , Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania and metropolitan New York. |
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