Lexington Home Brands Teams with FurnishNet
on B2B Rollout
May 30, 2003

Top-25 manufacturer replaces EDI with Internet-based solution to reduce costs, improve speed and accuracy, and increase performance and profitability

SAN DIEGO, CA -FurnishNet today announced that Lexington Home Brands, a leading full-line home furnishings manufacturer, has replaced its electronic data interchange (EDI) network with FurnishNet's solution for Transaction Management. Lexington moved to outsource its electronic document exchange with FurnishNet to lower maintenance costs, reduce training expenses, and improve the speed and accuracy of communications with its trading partners for greater performance and profitability.

"Several years ago, our larger retail customers mandated that we build an EDI solution, but the implementation required a lot of in-house expertise and the network proved very expensive to maintain," said Rick Aaronson, director of information technology at Lexington Home Brands. "We chose to replace our EDI infrastructure with FurnishNet to take advantage of FurnishNet's strong technology and industry-wide network for electronic data exchange. By outsourcing our document exchange, we've been able to reduce staffing costs, eliminate the need for expensive hardware and software upgrades, and spend our IT dollars more effectively."

Lexington has completed migration of electronic document exchange with its current EDI-enabled dealers to FurnishNet's solution for Transaction Management. The initial deployment of FurnishNet included many of the nation's top department stores and home furnishings retailers, including: Bon Marché, Burdines, Macy's, Marshall Field, Nebraska Furniture Mart, Riches/Lazarus, Rose Furniture, and Star Furniture.

"FurnishNet's performance has been really good for us," said Aaronson. "Orders from our dealers are loaded directly into our system. Our relationship with FurnishNet improves the speed and accuracy at which Lexington can fill customer orders."

FurnishNet's solution for Transaction Management speeds the accurate transmission of purchase orders, purchase order acknowledgements, advance ship notices, invoices, and many other transaction types. By integrating e-mail, web applications, electronic data interchange (EDI), XML, and faxed-based processes into a unique "Any-to-Any" exchange, FurnishNet is able to translate the information into the appropriate format for the immediate electronic flow of information between business partners of any size, running on any corporate system.

According to Ron Sellers, vice president of sales for FurnishNet, "We are looking forward to working with Lexington in a partnership to convert their key dealers to electronic document exchange with our Transaction Management solution, which will dramatically improve their business processes and lower operating costs."

About Lexington Home Brands
Lexington Home Brands is widely recognized as an industry brand and style leader, having pioneered "lifestyle" furniture brands with the introduction of Bob Timberlake® in 1990. Today, the 100-year-old company designs, manufactures, and markets home furnishings for some of the world's most valued brand names, including: Tommy Bahama®, Nautica Home, Waverly®, Palmer Home™, Susan Sargent, Lexington®, Southern Living®, and Smithsonian®. An expansive manufacturing and import company, Lexington produces a full line of bedroom, dining, casual dining, occasional, home entertainment, home office, youth, upholstered, leather, and wicker furniture. Lexington products are distributed through an extensive base of independent home furnishings retailers, department stores, galleries, and designer showrooms in the United States and abroad. Founded in 1901 as Dixie Furniture Company, Lexington Home Brands is now one of the nation's Top 25 home furnishings manufacturers. For more information, visit www.lexington.com.

About FurnishNet
With almost 400 trading partners and over $1.5 billion in contracted purchase order volume, FurnishNet is the leading provider of Internet-based supply chain solutions for retailers, manufacturers, and suppliers in the home furnishings industry. FurnishNet's solutions for Parts Management and Transaction Management provide a cost-effective alternative to EDI, and help trading partners to streamline communications, reduce errors, and save hard costs. For more information, visit www.furnishnet.com.