MBT International Completes Acquisition of The Book Stable - Becomes Primary Internet Shopping Destination for Agricultural Books and Videos

Business Wire, Feb 19, 1999

CASTLE ROCK, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 19, 1999--MBT International, Inc. (OTC BB: MBTI), parent company of AgriMall.com (www.agrimall.com), HorseNet.com (www.horsenet.com), and LifeAtHome.com (www.life@home.com), announced today the acquisition of The Book Stable (www.bookstable.com), on line since 1995 and one of the first booksellers to market on the Internet.

Specializing in thousands of equestrian book titles for more than 30 years, the Company also markets a proprietary design line of labels and business forms for the horse industry and represents almost 50 equestrian magazines as a subscriber agent.

Under MBTI management and using its current equestrian book line as a base, The Book Stable is rapidly expanding its title list to include agricultural or livestock-oriented books, and will offer more than 6,000 titles for sale. Additionally, the Company is creating a new division specializing in rare and out-of-print equestrian and agricultural books and will be offering them to collectors utilizing MBTI's proprietary auction environment.

The previously announced acquisition of HorseNet.com included an exclusive, strategic relationship with EquiVid International, North America's largest supplier of equestrian videos. Besides its almost 2,000 video titles about horses and horse people, EquiVid also carries a line of informational video titles about animal husbandry and agriculture.

"Utilizing the model pioneered by Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), we are developing our AgriMall.com and HorseNet.com Websites to become the ultimate shopping destinations for agriculture or equestrian industry-specific books and videos," stated Andy McKinnon, CEO of MBTI. "Our video streaming technology, similar to Broadcast.com (NASDAQ: BCST), will be utilized to provide previews of the home videos and ultimately will be used as the delivery vehicle for pay-per-view and/or live Internet broadcasts of ag or horse industry programming."

MBTI's strategy is to acquire high-content, value-added, sophisticated yet navigable websites and become a leader in the $300 billion agricultural industry. Upon completion of the BookStable.com acquisition, MBTI's database will expand to over 400,000 users. MBTI continually evaluates highly focused acquisitions that will further increase both the traffic and volume of e-commerce at its AgriMall.com site. MBTI is positioning itself to file an application for listing on the Nasdaq Small Cap Market in the first half of 1999, and has engaged Arthur Anderson as auditor.

Certain statements in this release are forward-looking. Although MBT International, Inc. believes its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions within the bounds of its knowledge of its business and operations, there can be no assurance that actual results will not differ materially from its expectations. For factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations and underlying assumptions, see reports by MBT International filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.