Gloucester, Mass.—April 4, 2005—TradeStone Software, the leader in enabling domestic and international sourcing through a Unified Buying Process, today announced the commercial availability of its Unified Buying Engine, a technology platform that enables companies to streamline all purchasing into one view and business process. In a separate and related announcement, TradeStone today unveiled its TradeStone Suite, modular applications addressing product planning, sourcing, order management, logistics and finance that are powered by the Unified Buying Engine.

Already in use by major retailers such as American Eagle Outfitters, TradeStone's Unified Buying Engine offers visibility deep into the supply chain by providing a single view of such operations as managing reporting and queries and alerting for exceptions. It also enables critical path management, best practice modeling, workflow and collaboration.

TradeStone's Unified Buying Engine is designed to work with an existing buying infrastructure that may include legacy systems such as a PDM, forecasting, order entry, warehousing or finance. Its design enables the Engine to immediately enhance existing systems with expanded functionality while converting disparate isles of information into truly collaborative nodes, resulting in a single, unified buying process.

"TradeStone is one of the most important changes to the merchandising process we have ever implemented at the company," said Laura Weil, CFO of American Eagle Outfitters. "TradeStone has streamlined our entire PO process, allows merchants to understand and analyze their businesses better, eliminates errors caused by mountains of Excel spreadsheets and ultimately reduces data entry and training hours."

Unified Buying Process: Uniting Domestic and International Purchasing TradeStone Software has been at the forefront of a bold new trend in global sourcing known as the Unified Buying Process, a strategic initiative that unites an organization's domestic and international purchasing.

The Unified Buying Process supports one view and business process for both international and domestic sourcing while addressing the growing imperative within organizations to directly source from an ever expanding global universe of vendors.

"Aberdeen's research tells us that 58 percent of systems and solutions that are employed as parts of strategic sourcing initiatives are manual or conducted via fax or email.[*] It is not atypical for a buyer to access up to eight such systems and maintain ten to twelve spreadsheets as part of the buying and sourcing process," said Paula Rosenblum, director of Retail Research at Aberdeen Group. "Retailers must take steps to integrate these disparate solutions to improve their reaction time and gain maximum leverage from their sourcing activities."

In a typical supply chain, buyers and sellers must access multiple internal and external systems to view data, create transactions and effectively collaborate and update constantly changing information. The Unified Buying Process consolidates these multiple systems for both sides, masking the underlying complexities that cross multiple systems and geographies—enabling one way of buying goods worldwide.

"The TradeStone team identified a critical business need for a Unified Buying Process when working with leading retailers like American Eagle Outfitters and The Children's Place," said Sue Welch, CEO of TradeStone Software. "This issue has become a frontline concern for many retailers, driven by boardroom directives to boost margins through direct sourcing of international products, despite the fact that few IT systems fully support the complexities and unique requirements of global trade."

Increasing Profits on the International Stage

Throughout the history of e-sourcing, companies, especially retailers, have focused their efforts on domestic systems. However, approximately 70 percent of a store's merchandise is produced outside of a retailer's home country. The emergence of a truly global marketplace creates the need for a sophisticated sourcing system that addresses the complexities of international sourcing.

By implementing a Unified Buying Process, retailers can effectively leverage the margins that are currently being ‘left on the table' by not directly and effectively sourcing internationally. A Unified Buying Process also opens up the global market for suppliers and buyers and welcomes into the process smaller players, creating a level playing field for a truly global market. The end result is the acceleration of business decisions and access to greater choice and diversity of product.

The TradeStone Unified Buying Engine: Pricing and Availability

The TradeStone Unified Buying Engine enables retailers to truly implement a Unified Buying Process. The Engine is available immediately as the underlying framework and in support of the TradeStone Suite. The modular design of the TradeStone Suite allows rapid deployment and a system that is priced based upon the size and scope of the implementation.

For more information about the Unified Buying Engine and TradeStone Suite visit www.TradeStoneSoftware.com.

About TradeStone Software, Inc.
TradeStone Software enables retailers and manufacturers to plan, design, collaborate on and purchase goods from across the world as easily as from across the street. TradeStone's Unified Buying Engine uses Web services technology to layer across an organization's existing infrastructure while its modular software fills in buying process gaps to provide a single view, access and interaction across the entire procurement process. The first and only complete solution for global sourcing, product lifecycle management, and unified order management, TradeStone's intuitive "No Training" technology helps people throughout the supply chain to collaborate globally, enabling users to focus on speeding innovative products to market. Marquee customers include American Eagle Outfitters, The Children's Place, Deutsche Woolworth, Ocean State Job Lot, Pacific Alliance and Federated Department Stores. TradeStone Software is based in Gloucester, Mass. and can be found on the Web at www.TradeStoneSoftware.com.

Contact:

Tania Stockbridge
TradeStone Software
978-281-3723
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