Crossmarket.com Teams With Portal Giant Lycos to eCommerce-Enable Small to Medium-Sized Retailers.

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 18, 1999--

Lycos Leverages CrossMarket Corporations' Established Retailer Base:

Crossmarket.com Customers Reap Benefit of

Lycos Merchant Center

CrossMarket Corporation (www.crossmarket.com), the only on-line business-to-business marketplace specifically for giftware, housewares, tabletop and home furnishings industries, today announced an agreement with Lycos, Inc., (NASDAQ:LCOS), the fastest growing Internet portal and the world's largest online community, to become a retail recruitment arm for the portal's new Lycos Merchant Center, announced separately today by Lycos. Crossmarket.com allows retailers to buy from brand name manufacturers through auction and fixed-priced sales. The combination of the strengths of crossmarket.com and Lycos provides a comprehensive Internet service offerings to retailers -- allowing them to both buy and sell cost effectively on the Internet.

The agreement targets crossmarket.com's growing stable of small to medium-sized gift and home furnishings retailers for integration into Lycos' main shopping destination and enables crossmarket.com to offer its retail base storefronts on an Internet portal with the traffic of more than 30 million unique monthly visitors.

"Many small retail shop owners are currently in a bind because they want to get in on the e-commerce movement but don't have the resources to do it properly. This alliance allows the retailer to not only gain exposure to millions of potential new customers, but also gives them cost-effective access to manufacturer inventory that was previously unavailable to the smaller retailer ," said Mark Florence, president of crossmarket.com. "This agreement provides Lycos the ability to leverage crossmarket.com's retailers and industry knowledge."

The Lycos Merchant Center, (http://products.lycos.com/crossmarket) is a new service that allows on-line merchants to integrate their stores into Lycos Shopping and provides the tools for off-line merchants to quickly, easily, and inexpensively enter the world of e-commerce. Building a Lycos store is easy with the point-and-click tools of the Lycos Merchant Center. The on-line wizards guide merchants through a series of screens and help them through the decision-making process -- no special software is required and a new store can be created in less than ten minutes.

"Merchants who want to make their first foray into e-Commerce or want to extend their e-commerce penetration significantly can now take advantage of the huge audience reach of the Lycos Network with a minimum of effort," said Cory Eaves, director of e-commerce products at Lycos. "The biggest shopping season of the year is rapidly approaching, and the Lycos Merchant Center can simplify what could otherwise be a time-consuming, complicated process."

"The Internet is changing my retail business by providing us with a quick, cost effective solution to two of our biggest challenges," commented Kristie Guerriero of the Gift Gallery in Monroe, LA, a user of crossmarket.com's services. "Not only can we connect and conduct business with brand-name suppliers via the Internet, we can now also expand our presence online in a matter of minutes, while tapping into the extensive customer base that Lycos affords."

About CrossMarket Corporation

Headquartered near Boston in Medford, Massachusetts, crossmarket.com is the first Internet business-to-business marketplace specifically for giftware, housewares, tabletop and specialty items. With 45 years of combined experience in retail, product management and cutting-edge technology, entrepreneurs Mark R. Florence, president, and vice presidents Andrew F. Matus, Jayson H. Score and Richard M. DeFuria formed CrossMarket Corporation in 1998.

Crossmarket.com currently connects its retailers with many high-end manufacturers in North America, who use crossmarket.com to expand their distribution channels to this traditionally fragmented market. Some of the suppliers include American Greetings Corporation, Fetco International, Farberware(R) Inc., The Foreside Company, Boston International, Clay Art, Artistry Designs, Beautysilk(R) Flowers, Notes & Queries, Inc., Visions by Frieder, Sheridan, Stoneworks Gallery, Clay Design Inc., Reliance Trading Corp. of America, Towle(R) Manufacturing Company, and Silvestri(R), Inc.

For more information about CrossMarket Corporation, visit the company on the World Wide Web at http://www.crossmarket.com, call 781/393-4411 or send e-mail to [e-mail].

About Lycos

Founded in 1995, Lycos, Inc. is a leading Web media company and owner of the Lycos Network, one of the most visited hubs on the Internet reaching one out of every two Web users. The Lycos Network is a unified set of Web sites that attracts a diverse audience by offering a variety of services, including leading Web navigation resources, homepage building and other Web community services and a comprehensive shopping center. The Lycos Network is composed of premium sites: Lycos.com, Tripod, WhoWhere, Angelfire, MailCity, HotBot, HotWired, Wired News, Webmonkey, Suck.com, MyTime and Sonique.com. Lycos.com (http://www.lycos.com), "Your Personal Internet Guide," is dedicated to helping each individual user locate, retrieve and manage information tailored to his or her personal interests. Headquartered near Boston in Waltham, Mass., Lycos, Inc. is a global Internet leader with a major presence throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia.

(c)1999 Lycos, Inc. - Lycos(R) is a registered trademark of Carnegie Mellon University. All other product or service marks mentioned herein are those of Lycos or their respective owners. All rights reserved.