Cash Registers Start Ringing Early In New York Area For The Priceline.com WebHouse Club

Business Wire, Nov 2, 1999

STAMFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 2, 1999--

72 Hours after Launch, Privately Held Name-your-price Grocery Service

is Registering a Sale Every 9 Seconds, 24 Hours a Day

WebHouse Club Members Buying 20% More Than Typical In-store

Grocery Purchases

New Yorkers evidently recognize a bargain when they see one. On Saturday, the priceline WebHouse Club quietly opened its doors to let New York-area consumers name their own price for more than 140 categories of groceries. Saturday's pre-opening was followed Monday morning by the launch of an extensive TV, radio and newspaper ad campaign featuring William Shatner.

After just 72 hours of operation, the priceline WebHouse Club was registering a sale every 9 seconds and had moved more than 31,000 items off the shelves of the 650 participating supermarkets in the tri-state area, which covers portions of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

"After three days, we're exceeding the daily volume of the biggest supermarket in the New York area, and our average transaction is 20% higher than the typical in-store grocery transaction," said Jay S. Walker, founder of the WebHouse Club. "This means we're providing consumers with exceptional savings on national brands all across the store, and delivering significant incremental volume to our retail partners. We expected the WebHouse Club to be a compelling consumer proposition, but this initial response took even us by surprise."

The WebHouse Club allows consumers to name prices that are substantially lower than those available in any grocery store or supermarket-- well below even sale and warehouse club prices. Unlike other Internet grocery buying services, WebHouse Club enables consumers to get their bargains on-line--up to half-off--then pick up the items conveniently at their favorite grocery stores. More than 650 area stores are participating in the tri-state area.

The WebHouse Club is a privately held affiliate licensee of priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN). Customers access the service by going to priceline.com's Web site on the Internet (www.priceline.com) and selecting the WebHouse Club from the various name-your-price services available to them (leisure airline tickets, hotel rooms, home mortgage and new cars). Since the WebHouse Club is a privately held affiliate licensee of priceline.com, WebHouse Club financial results will not be included in priceline.com's future financial statements.

To use the new service, consumers simply log onto priceline.com from their home or office computers and name their own price before they go to their favorite grocery stores. Consumers get their groceries at any of the more than 650 participating grocery stores in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut metropolitan area. Major grocery chains that are taking part in the venture include A&P, Pathmark, Stop & Shop, King Kullen, ShopRite, Gristede's, D'Agostino, Waldbaum's, the Food Emporium, Food Town and Super Food Mart. The WebHouse Club's New York introduction is the first phase of a national rollout that will get underway in 2000.

How It Works

To use the WebHouse Club consumers log onto priceline.com from their home or office computers before they go to the grocery store. After entering the WebHouse Club, members can select from hundreds of grocery items. After choosing their two favorite brands for each product category, they can name their own prices and find out in 60 seconds whether their prices have been accepted. Members lock in their prices by pre-paying with a credit card while they're still on-line.

Before logging off, members print out a pre-paid grocery list that they can take with them to their favorite participating store. This pre-paid grocery list includes information verifying the products consumers purchased through the WebHouse Club. At the check-out counter, one swipe of a shopper's priceline WebHouse Club card completes the process.

Millions Of "$10 In Free Groceries" Cards Being Distributed

To introduce the WebHouse Club to shoppers, millions of free priceline WebHouse Club membership cards are being distributed to New York-area consumers. Each card (one per household) entitles its user to obtain $10 worth of free groceries at savings up to 50% below regular store prices. Shoppers can use the cards at any participating WebHouse Club grocery store. New York-area consumers can get their free WebHouse Club membership card in one of three ways: in their local newspaper, by requesting a card on the priceline.com Web site, or from their favorite participating supermarket.

During the next two weeks, millions of WebHouse Club cards and information sheets will be distributed to shoppers at supermarket check-out counters. To activate the card and receive $10 worth of free half-price groceries, consumers simply enter the number found on the back of each individually numbered card the first time they log onto the WebHouse Club.

William Shatner To Introduce WebHouse Club

The new service is being introduced to New York-area residents through a $25 million TV, radio and newspaper advertising campaign featuring world-famous actor William Shatner. In the campaign's TV ads, Shatner uses his home PC to demonstrate how easy it is to use the WebHouse Club. WebHouse Club radio ads feature Shatner musing in off-beat ways about the prices of several household products including mouthwash, tuna, frozen french fries and grape jelly.