El Dorado Furniture Picks IBM to Support South Florida Expansion

Market Wire, February, 2005

IBM today announced that retailer El Dorado Furniture Corporation has selected IBM server and storage systems to replace competitive systems and speed current retail ordering and processing solutions.

The new on demand solution is expected to perform up to five times faster than previous systems, allowing El Dorado to streamline its data center to provide employees with tools for better merchandising decisions.

As one of the largest Hispanic-owned retail enterprises and one of the top 50 furniture retailers in the country, El Dorado Furniture Corporation stands out in the home décor business by offering its customers a personalized and prompt shopping experience through its strategic investments in supply chain technology.

By replacing machines from Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Data General, with the IBM eServer p5 570 running POWER5 microprocessors and an IBM FastT600 storage network, El Dorado Furniture will be able to reduce the time it takes to process customer orders and inventory reports from hours to a few minutes, with most processes taking only a few seconds.

For example, over 95 percent of the furniture items in any El Dorado store are available in stock for same-day delivery, compared to larger furniture chains that take anywhere from five days to five months to deliver their merchandise to customers.

"Instead of waiting for merchandise updates to arrive each week, sales personnel will soon be able to access this information as soon as they need it," said Jesus Capó, chief information officer, El Dorado Furniture. "The new IBM solution allows us to process inventory and sales reports faster than ever before, which translates into a faster, more efficient in-store experience for our customers and a significant cost savings for us."

The company will use IBM's technology to run business applications such as point-of-sale, purchasing and inventory solutions simultaneously. The new system will also provide 24/7 back-up services to the enterprise resource planning system, which supports company-wide e-mail, payroll, catalog, accounting and data mining applications.

Champion Solutions Group, an IBM Premier Solution Partner in Boca Raton, designed and deployed the server consolidation and storage networking strategy.

About El Dorado Furniture Corporation

South Florida's El Dorado Furniture is one of the largest Hispanic-owned retail enterprises, and it is among the top 50 furniture retailers in the country. El Dorado is privately owned and operates nine retail stores in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. The company is wholly owned by the Capó family: father Manuel and his seven sons hold executive positions at the corporation. For additional information, visit www.eldoradofurniture.com.

About IBM

For more information about IBM, visit www.ibm.com.

Contact: Gretchen McWhorter IBM (404) 238-6664 gmcwhort@us.ibm.com