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Just Released: Death Care Exchange

Funeral Exchange Online BtoB Marketplace Brings
e-Commerce Efficiency to the Death Care Industry
Online Trading Exchange and Portal Community to Accommodate
Industry’s Traditions, Personal Relationships

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 8, 2000-- Funeral Exchange today announced the launch of a business-to-business vertical exchange and portal community focused on the $20 billion North American death care industry.

Offering a broad array of procurement and supply chain automation tools, Funeral Exchange’s customer-focused business model is designed to reflect the industry’s respect for tradition and conservative profile.

``The death care industry is steeped in tradition and intensely reliant on personal relationships,’’ said Todd Abrams, Funeral Exchange founder, chairman and chief executive officer. ``We’re designing our exchange to allow suppliers and buyers to realize the benefits of e-commerce without abandoning their established practices, to ’evolutionize’ rather than ’revolutionize.’’’

Funeral Exchange will provide the collaborative medium and management tools that will allow its community members to streamline their sales and order management processes, Abrams said.

``Sellers will retain control of how their products are presented to individual buyers, which will allow them to preserve existing one-to-one relationships,’’ he said. ``They will gain access to a larger audience of customers without adding additional staff, and we will provide tools for analysis of transactional data which will help them improve sales forecasting and product development decisions.’’

According to Abrams, death care industry suppliers can even set up their own web presence within the Funeral Exchange portal. Buyers will gain easy access to a broader range of suppliers, and they will have the ability to dynamically aggregate buying power. Furthermore, buyers will have access to their own set of analytical tools to help improve procurement decisions.

Abrams said buyers will need only dial-up Internet access to participate, and, for those who lack such access, Funeral Exchange will offer a turnkey solution. The exchange also will provide for online invoicing and bill payment, and has the tools in place for online order tracking and status information.

``Of course, these are options available to members of the Funeral Exchange community, and they will decide for themselves whether and when they want to take advantage of them,’’ he added.

Exchange design includes authentication procedures to ensure confidentiality, and industry standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology will maintain transaction security, Abrams noted. Access to more than 100 content feeds, both internal and external to the death care industry, will allow members to personalize their participation.

``We will also provide tools to facilitate credit checks, business reference checks and other standard industry practices,’’ he noted. ``However, in keeping with our design philosophy, it is the buyers and sellers themselves who will make the decision to authorize and conduct business with specific trading partners.’’

Abrams previously served as vice president of sales and marketing at EISA.com, a national Internet service provider. Prior to that, he was in charge of U.S. operations for EDGE Technologies, whose revenues rose from zero at his arrival in 1996 to $100 million in 1998. The son of a funeral director, he has more than 10 years of direct experience in the death care industry. He obtained a BA degree in public relations from Laurentian University.