Chicago's Fob.com Closes $5 Million Private Equity Round

Business Wire, Sept 28, 1999

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 28, 1999--

Entrepreneurs Patrick Blake and Greg Buchholz have raised a total of $5 million from individual investors to establish and begin operations of a new Internet company - fob.com. Previously, Mr. Blake co-founded and was President of Tunes.com, a leading online music network, which included Rollingstone.com. Mr. Buchholz, formerly of Goldman Sachs, has spent the last four years managing his own private equity firm - Court Capital.

Fob.com is a business-to-business e-commerce company focused on web enabling and streamlining the process of manufacturing input material procurement. This first round of capital will be used to deploy the company's Centralized Aggregate Purchasing System (CAPS(TM)) - a database application and Intranet tool-set which enables companies to outsource the purchasing of manufacturing materials.

"The business-to-business e-commerce market is on the verge of significant growth," said fob.com investor Peer Pedersen, chairman, Pedersen & Houpt. "Pat Blake and Greg Buchholz have the vision to get in on the ground floor and are capitalizing on this emerging opportunity with their newest venture." In addition to Peer Pedersen, fob.com's investor list includes Craig Duchossois - CEO of Duchossois Industries, Paul Davies - Chairman of Aon Reinsurance, Dean Buntrock - former CEO of Waste Management and Andrew Filipowski - former CEO of Platinum Technology.

"Traditionally, every manufacturing or service-process company has employed a purchasing department using an internal offline system to source input materials," said Pat Blake, fob.com CEO and co-founder. "By using the Internet as a ubiquitous networking tool, our Centralized Aggregate Purchasing System (CAPS(TM)) allows companies across entire industries to centralize their purchasing, reducing both material prices and transaction costs."

About The Centralized Aggregate Purchasing System (CAPS(TM))

Currently, 22 percent of the world's GDP consists of manufacturing or process input material procurement. Centralizing and outsourcing scalable functions such as purchasing will be a critical source of competitive advantage, directly affecting the bottom line for all product and process manufacturing companies. In September 1999, fob.com launched CAPS(TM), which is a proprietary Internet database application and tool-set enabling the easy assembly, collation and storage of diverse purchasing information from a large customer population. Each individual user enjoys both easy access and total security while reaping the benefits of centralized and outsourced purchasing. No other company has developed the vertical purchasing hub model or built the required Internet database application, giving fob.com the first mover and leadership position in this substantial business-to-business space.

According to Steven Kaplan, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, "fob.com uses the Web to provide a powerful mechanism to consolidate buyer power. Fob.com allows raw material buyers to materially lower their costs."

Please note: Patrick Blake and Greg Buchholz are available for interviews. To arrange for an interview, please contact Dan Ciancio at 312/233-1310.

Photos of Patrick Blake and Greg Buchholz are available upon request.