News

Netplex developing baby gift registry for Macy's

March 21, 2002

RESTON, Va. - Netplex Systems Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Netplex Group Inc. (OTC-BB:NTPL) is prototyping a baby gift registry for Macy's East Inc., a division of Federated Department Stores (NYSE:FD), according to a Netplex news release.

Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed.

The baby gift registry will consist of an in-store kiosk and hand-held scanners. Customers will scan the product codes of their gift selections and upload their selections to the kiosk. The kiosk will store the selections and make them available as a wish list for shoppers wanting to purchase gifts for them.

Netplex will develop the kiosk application, including its user interface and connections with the scanners. Netplex will also choose the kiosk hardware and manage the project.

Ben Diss, Macy's vice president of information technology, said that Macy's chose Netplex because of its experience and a successful working relationship on previous projects. In a recent interview, St. Jones, kiosk application designer and vice president of new business development for Netplex, said that Netplex was also working with Macy's on a cosmetics application called Kioskmetics (see "St. Jones is Netplex's guardian angel")

The baby gift registry prototype will provide extra services to Macy's customers while generating information used for determining a successful larger-scale deployment, the release stated.

Netplex Systems, based in Reston, Va., is a systems consulting and technology integration company specializing in strategy, technology, and security. It has experience in the retail, supply chain and healthcare industries.

Federated Department Stores Inc., with corporate offices in Cincinnati and New York, is one of the nation's leading department store retailers, with annual sales of more than $17.7 billion. Federated currently operates more than 400 department stores in 33 states under the names of Bloomingdale's, The Bon Marche, Burdines, Goldsmith's, Lazarus, Macy's, Rich's, and Stern's.

Federated also operates Fingerhut, Bloomingdale's By Mail, Macy's By Mail, macys.com, and bloomingdales.com direct-to-consumer catalog and electronic commerce subsidiaries. Macy's East, with 1998 sales of $4.6 billion, currently operates 87 stores in 15 eastern states.