Mercantec's E-Commerce Solution Powers
Award-Winning 'Kik Wear' Website
Mercantec delivers robust, easy-to-use payment and inventory
system to e-commerce 'clothing wonderland' for teens
CHICAGO - Monday, June 19,
2000 - Mercantec, Inc.®, a leading provider of Internet
commerce software products and services, today announced that
its SoftCart® e-commerce solution powers the dynamic,
award-winning e-commerce website of Kik Wear Industries (www.kikwear.com),
a $30 million LA-based company that manufacturers and markets
youth-oriented casual clothes and accessories. The website,
leveraging Mercantec SoftCart and designed by Robust Technology
LLC of St. Louis, was recently voted the "Best E-Commerce
Website" by The Flash Film Festival.
The Kik Wear website is an "e-commerce
wonderland," according to its developers, that includes video,
multiple views of its clothing, celebrity chats, contests,
music, trend information and more. Its e-commerce page, called
K-land, has been consistently profitable with a 20 percent
average monthly revenue growth since its launch in October
1999. Mercantec SoftCart provides the back-end payment and
inventory system to K-land's storefront application.
"K-land allows us to reach beyond
our traditional distribution channel of 1,000 retailers,"
said Alex Berenson, Kik Wear president. "We can now market
to kids who can't get to the malls or store locations that
carry our merchandise."
The Kik Wear website developers,
Scott Tweedie and Daniel Drabb of Robust Technology, selected
the Mercantec solution because it provides a complete and
easy-to-use solution for building and maintaining an online
storefront.
"Kik Wear needed a back-end
payment and inventory system that was robust, scalable and
innovative," said Scott Tweedie, CEO and producer of Robust
Technology. "We selected SoftCart because of its proven reliability,
unparalleled security and open API code which allowed us to
integrate the back-end payment and inventory features with
a Flash front-end system."
Combining Mercantec's SoftCart
with Flash™ (software that assists in developing and importing
animation, artwork, sound track and other graphics into websites)
as well as Robust Technology's proprietary coding, RobustCart
was developed. RobustCart is a graphic- and multimedia-friendly
e-commerce solution that powers Kik Wear's website. The solution
fuses fast loading vector-based graphics with database and
e-commerce scripting to create the award-winning K-land storefront.
About SoftCart
The winner of NewMedia magazine's 1999 Hyper Award for Best
Out-Of-The-Box Store, SoftCart enables merchants to quickly
and easily build and maintain their online stores. Designed
to be compatible with a merchant's existing business systems,
SoftCart has an open, API-based architecture that accommodates
the widest range of databases, web servers and browsers, order
delivery options, tax and shipping models, and payment systems.
This open architecture allows a website designer or systems
integrator to tie SoftCart's commerce capabilities into the
merchant's website at any stage in the site's evolution -
whether starting from scratch or adding commerce to an existing
website.
About Mercantec
Established in 1995, Mercantec, Inc. is a leading global provider
of software products and services that enable Internet commerce.
Mercantec distributes complete e-commerce solutions through
leveraged channels to small- to medium-sized businesses. Among
those channels are service providers, financial organizations,
and Internet content providers. Mercantec's Internet commerce
solutions are used by more than 15,000 merchants worldwide
through more than 200 industry leading Internet service providers,
such as Verio/Hiway, EarthLink, Sprint, Interliant and Telefonica.
Among those in the financial channel are American Express
and DataPro Software. For additional company or product information,
visit the Mercantec website, www.mercantec.com,
or call 630-305-3200.
About Kik Wear Industries
Kik Wear is a California clothing manufacturer specializing
in denims, cargo pants, jackets, t-shirts, backpacks, belts
and more. For additional company information, visit the Kik
Wear website, www.kikwear.com.
