Digital Focus and Popular Science Laud FotoWire; Pioneering e-Photofinishing Service Earns Industry Award.

Business Editors

PMA 2000

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 2, 2000

FotoWire(R) Inc. - the pioneer and world market leader in e-photofinishing - was named a finalist award winner in the third annual Excellence In Imaging Awards held in here tonight. Co-sponsored by the leading imaging newsletter &uot;DigitalFocus&uot; and by &uot;Popular Science Magazine&uot; - the world's largest science and technology magazine - the highly coveted awards honor the best in digital imaging technologies for 1999. The awards are presented the evening before the giant Photo Marketing Association (PMA) trade show opens.

Patrick Serex, CEO of FotoWire, the three-year-old, Internet-based global network of photofinishing labs, said, &uot;We are grateful to DigitalFocus and Popular Science for recognizing the unique contribution made by FotoWire to the new digital imaging economy.&uot;

Launched more than two years ago, the FotoWire Internet Print Service is an open network of independent, chain and wholesale e-photofinishers serving customers globally. FotoWire enables minilabs and others to accept and process digital print orders via the Internet, either though FotoWire's own fully featured free Internet client software or via custom-built Web interfaces.

With more than 50 labs currently online in 17 countries in North America, Europe and the United Kingdom, FotoWire has a network printing capacity more than 50 times any other e-photofinisher.

&uot;Each time we add a new lab to the network, we are adding the same capacity as one Shutterfly or any one of the new high-profile e-photofinishers,&uot; Serex said. &uot;But only FotoWire can scale up to meet market demand as we offer digital consumers more choices in e-photofinishers. We let them choose where to buy, what to pay and how to get exactly what they want.&uot;

In the United States, leading FotoWire members including Signature Color of Austin, Tex.; Mystic Color Labs of Mystic, Conn.; and EZ Prints of Kissismee, Fla. Several new U.S. labs will come on line shortly, following production tests currently in progress.

&uot;Our architecture is such that we can scale to the nth degree. At present, we are only using a fraction of our bandwidth and server capacity. We could handle more than one hundred times our present production levels without blinking,&uot; said Serex.

At the PMA show, FotoWire will be exhibiting its e-photofinishing network service in the Agfa booth.

About FotoWire

Founded in 1996, FotoWire Inc. was originally known as FotoWire Development S.A. of Geneva, Switz., a company whose founders have an extensive background in image editing software and electronic commerce. In 1999, FotoWire Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif., was created and became the parent company. FotoWire provides wholesale photofinishers, minilab operators and photo retailers with solutions that are well adapted to their commercialization and production processes. The company has implemented its Internet Print Service in several countries with traditional photofinishers who aim to offer digital photography printing services to their clientele. Privately held, FotoWire's investors include Logitech, Agfa, ICE Enterprises and others.

NOTE: FotoWire is a registered trademark (Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.) of FotoWire Development S.A All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.