Ecometry, GERS, Escalate Retail Update

We spoke with John Marrah, President of Escalate Retail, who clarified a number of issues regarding the merger of Ecometry with GERS.

We already knew the name of the new company was derived from Escalate, a Tier One order management system GERS had purchased in September 2004, with users such as Eddie Bauer and Williams Sonoma. It was a leading provider of eCommerce, order management, and order fulfillment systems for the retail industry, which became the hosted Java-based "MultiChannel Commerce" solution in the GERS suite of products, with its development and support out of Redwood Shores, CA.

In the next six months, GERS and Ecometry will fully integrate and rebrand all of their existing solutions, modules, and components, including Nextor and Blue Martini, which was fully integrated with Ecometry in July, and integrate them all on a Web Services platform.

The new company will have three primary target markets:
1) direct marketers (catalog, eCommerce)
2) general retail
3) specialty retailers, such as furniture (a GERS area of specialization)

As CEO of Escalate, Stewart Bloom will focus on financial issues, while John Marrah, as President, will be handling product strategy and top-line revenue generation, plus additional acquisitions.

The objective of the Escalate Retail, a $100 million company, is to become a "Multichannel Retail Powerhouse." This does seem to be, at this stage, a marriage of two companies (and their extended families) that stands a reasonably good chance of working as planned.

As for legacy Ecometry users, "they should see no difference in support or in migration to the open platform" whether they migrate now or in the future. Current users of the open platform should also notice no significant change in features and functions, although the system will migrate to the Web Services platform.

So there you have it. Obviously, we'll keep you posted as time goes on....