Forum Archive Index - September 2000

["Oliver Shapleski" <Oliver.Shapleski@rws.co.nz>]

Now am I just completely wrong, or does SMR not have a major stake in Genie 
Systems?  If they do, why aren't SMR making sure that good news like this gets 
back to us kiwi investors - I've attached an article from the Sydney Morning 
Herald from last week...  Seems like Strathmore may have found another good one?

OS

Genie's out of the bottle, and soaring
By DAVID BRAUE
Tuesday, August 29, 2000

Champagne has been flowing freely recently at the New Zealand-based software 
developer Genie Systems. This month it opened an Australian office, and it is 
finding itself rapidly expanding overseas after it was accidentally stumbled 
over on the Web by two major US companies looking for inventory management 
software to improve their back-end business processes.

Genie's key product, OrderWare, has been in development since 1995 and produced 
since 1997, with local customers including Unisys, Softgen, Quoin Technology 
and Apsilon Design. But it was earlier this year that what could be the 
company's ticket to big-time international success came through in the form of 
an email from the MIS director of Babies `R' Us, a US-based children's retailer 
and spin-off of the Toys `R' Us retail chain.

After nearly a year of scouring the US for a solution, Babies `R' Us a $US1 
billion retailer with 136 stores across the country happened upon Genie's Web 
page and realised OrderWare was just what it was looking for. Genie sent a team 
of two software engineers to help Babies `R' Us IT team customise and implement 
the solution, a joint team effort that involved integration with five separate 
mainframe systems and took about 90 days to install a preliminary system at 10 
stores. OrderWare will be installed in the remaining stores by next year.

The system controls the movement of large products, things such as swing sets 
and furniture, which aren't stocked on store shelves but must be delivered to 
customers from the warehouse on strict timetables.

OrderWare handles key tasks including order receipts, tracking, prioritisation 
and distribution among five distribution centres and 50 US suppliers, and will 
eventually let Babies `R' Us extend its supply chain right back to its 
suppliers' warehouses, freeing it from the need to manage inventory at all.

It's an environment equal in scale to that of Genie's other major US customer, 
GE Capital Finance, which also happened upon the company's solution after 
encountering its Web site byaccident. "It was always ourintention to play in 
the US market, but it's been somewhat surprising to us that our style of 
application has been so attractive to Fortune 100 companies," says Genie CEO 
and co-founder Mike Hendry. "Australasian software businesses really do have a 
unique style of software, and therefore I think there are many opportunities 
for businesses from Australia to participate in the North American marketplace."

Supporting the company's rapid overseas growth has been another matter 
entirely. The company, which originated in New Zealand but has since based 
itself in Sydney, is expanding in all directions at once. It maintains offices 
in New Zealand and San Francisco, also has customers in Singapore, and plans to 
virtually quadruple its numbers to around 60 people by Christmas to support its 
rapid growth.

"It would be great," Hendry says when asked whether the Babies `R' Us contract 
could potentially pave the way into its parent organisation, which happens to 
be the world's largest toy store and is feeling considerable pressure to 
improve its back-end processes after it ended up eating crow last Christmas 
when it missed many deliveries due to inadequate back-end processes.

Toys `R' Us recently moved to resolve this problem by partnering with 
Amazon.com to create co-branded online retail stores combining Amazon's mature 
fulfilment processes with Toys `R' Us retail expertise. But with retailers 
clearly focused on improving back-end processes across the board, Hendry is 
optimistic about Genie's potential in overseas markets. Given its success so 
far, the Web will continue to play a major role in the way it markets itself 
here and overseas.

"It goes to show how important demonstrating your capabilities on the Web is," 
he says. "We're seeing the concept of an instantly global business; our 
customers and clients are coming from everywhere in the world. The concept of 
the traditional exporting model doesn't seem to apply anymore, and the Web is 
what's making that possible."



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