Contact: Kevin Bender
Information Resources, Inc.
(312) 474-3440
Companies Ally to Better Serve Customers' E-Commerce Information Needs Chicago and Lisle, Ill. –February 7, 2000 – Gladson & Associates, Inc., Lisle, Ill., and Information Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ: IRIC) today jointly announced the acquisition of IRI's National Product Library by Gladson, and their agreement to form a joint venture to serve the e-commerce needs of each company's customers. The IRI National Product Library contains product images and other information critical in helping retailers and manufacturers set retail shelves in food, drug, mass merchant, and convenience stores around the world.
Gladson, the leader in product databases, will be combining the IRI library with its own Universal Product Database to provide customers with the maximum amount of product information available anywhere. Originally, Gladson focused on the needs of drug and mass merchant retailers and manufacturers while IRI focused on food merchants and manufacturers.
"Increasingly, retailers and manufacturers are broadening their interests, at the insistence of the consumer. The lines between products offered by grocery, drug and mass merchant retailers have become blurred. We are delighted to have worked with IRI to build the broadest and deepest variety of products into a single database in response to client needs," said Ted Gladson, founder and CEO of Gladson & Associates.
IRI's President of Strategic Business Development, Rick Kurz agreed: "Gladson is clearly focused on bringing the highest level of innovation and quality to the product content needs of manufacturers, retailers and to the emerging e-commerce community. They represented an opportunity for IRI to both give its client-base superior capabilities and allow us to focus on our core strengths in consumer behavior and store sales information.
"As part of their new business alliance, IRI and Gladson Interactive, a newly-formed division of Gladson & Associates, Inc., will form a joint venture to provide e-commerce services that will combine Gladson's superior imaging and label content capture capability with IRI's dictionary, point of sale product movement information and panel information. This unique combination will provide the e-commerce community with powerful tools to understand and influence consumer choice.
Gladson & Associates, Inc. is a private company and has been in business for 29 years. It is widely recognized as the leader in accuracy, innovation and customer service in the product content arena.
Information Resources, Inc. is a leading provider of UPC scanner-based business solutions to the consumer packaged goods industry, offering services in the U.S., Europe and other international markets. The Company supplies CPG manufacturers, retailers and brokers with information and analysis critical to their sales, marketing and supply chain operations. IRI provides services designed to deliver value through an enhanced understanding of the consumer to a majority of the Fortune 500 companies in the CPG industry.
"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Statements in this press release regarding the business of Information Resources, Inc. or the business of Gladson & Associates, Inc. or Gladson Interactive which are not historical facts are "forward looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties. We refer you to the documents that Information Resources, Inc. files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents contain and identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward-looking statements.
Universal Database™ • E-Commerce Database • Advertising Database • Planogram Services • Creative Services • Image Merchandising Solutions™ • Store Design • Gladson Information