Coors Brewing Company Awards Contract to The viaLink Company; National Rollout of Pricing Collection and Distribution System to Over 500 Distributors.

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 27, 1999--

The viaLink Company (Nasdaq:IQIQ) today announced that Coors Brewing Company will implement the viaLink Item Catalog and chain pricing services as its company-wide price collection and distribution system.

Coors Brewing Company and viaLink will work together to implement the viaLink services in more than 500 Coors distributor locations in the United States. The rollout will begin immediately and is scheduled to be completed by the summer of 2000. viaLink recently completed a successful pilot test of the Item Catalog and chain pricing services with 19 Ohio Coors distributors.

The viaLink Item Catalog and chain pricing services will enable Coors Brewing Company to provide reports to their retail customers showing consolidated promotional activity and pricing across all Coors distributors. The viaLink services, which are easily accessed through an Internet-based database, will enable all Coors distributors, regardless of their size and technological infrastructure, to provide their retail partners with pre-formatted pricing reports and enable price book synchronization.

"Coors is very pleased with the results of the pilot program and they are developing an aggressive nationwide implementation schedule," said Lewis B. 'Bucky' Kilbourne, chief executive officer of viaLink. "viaLink's innovative, easily accessible Internet technology will increase efficiencies in Coors' sales force, simplify promotional activities for their retail customers, and save time and reduce errors for Coors distributors. They are excited about the positive business building capabilities that our system provides."

"We are extremely pleased to have the opportunity to work with an industry leader such as Coors to strengthen their efficiency in the supply chain," continued Kilbourne. "The accurate exchange of pricing and promotion information is a mission critical activity in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) and retail industries. Traditional paper-driven data sharing methods have been error-prone, time consuming and inefficient. By implementing the viaLink services, Coors will benefit from increased sales, administrative efficiencies, greater promotional selling effectiveness, and fewer data entry errors."

"This contract represents another milestone in our strategy to further our growth by working with the most progressive CPG companies," said Robert I. Noe, executive vice president of business development for viaLink. "Rolling out the Item Catalog nationally with Coors will help enhance the market awareness of our leading e-commerce solutions within the CPG and retail industries. We plan to aggressively penetrate this market with the industry leaders and we expect this national contract to accelerate our commercial momentum."

About viaLink

The viaLink Company is a leading provider of secure, interactive e-business subscription-based services and solutions for the consumer packaged goods (CPG) and retail industries. viaLink's unique, Internet-based Item Catalog and related services replace traditional paper-driven methods by enabling CPG manufacturers, distributors, suppliers and retailers to manage supply chain transactions and information more effectively and efficiently through a synchronized, shared database system.

This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are delay in completion of the Coors roll-out beyond mid 2000, Coors continued acceptance of viaLink's services, and the acceptance of viaLink's services by other CPG and retail customers; as well as other factors detailed in viaLink's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its recent filings on Forms SB-2, 10-KSB and 10-QSB.