Belk Selects 7thOnline for Merchandise and Assortment Planning

New York, New York - January 13, 2006 - Belk, Inc., the nation's largest privately owned department store company, has selected 7thOnline, Inc., the premier provider of merchandise and assortment planning solutions to the fashion industry, to implement an assortment planning solution for all Belk merchandise divisions.  This new solution will provide a singular platform for Belk merchants and management to translate financial plans into optimal style assortments by store location.

"We selected 7thOnline for this initiative given their industry specific functionality and their retail expertise.  Their easy-to-use solution will enable our merchants to more efficiently execute store-level assortments, ultimately increasing profitability while reducing our average inventory.  In addition, 7thOnline provides the opportunity for future vendor collaboration," says Amy Wooden, EVP Planning & Allocation.

Bill Keith, Vice President of Merchandise Support at Belk, stated, "Our top priority is to improve SKU productivity through better assortment planning, and we believe that 7thOnline is the ideal technology partner to enable us to accomplish this goal."

7thOnline's planning solutions help retailers maximize revenue and margins by enabling them to drive better assortments on the selling floor.  The solutions provide a single platform to analyze historical performance, set strategic objectives, optimize current assortments, and align plans with financial objectives.  Throughout the process, management has full visibility into real-time plan information, from the widest organizational roll-up down to individual location activity.  The comprehensive functionality and enhanced visibility allows for streamlined assortment planning and better decision-making.

Max Ma, CEO of 7thOnline, stated, "We are delighted to partner with Belk for their assortment planning initiatives.  Their forward-thinking approach to assortment planning is well-aligned with our technology solutions, and we look forward to working with their team to continue to develop robust functionality that caters to the needs of this industry."

About Belk, Inc. -- Charlotte, N.C.-based Belk, Inc. is the nation's largest privately owned department store company with 277 stores, including 18 Proffitt's stores and 25 McRae's stores, located in 15 Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic states.  It was founded in Monroe, N.C. in 1888 by William Henry Belk and is in the third generation of Belk family leadership.

About 7thOnline -- 7thOnline provides comprehensive merchandise and assortment planning solutions specifically targeted to the unique planning, buying and ordering processes of retailers and vendors in the global apparel, footwear, and accessories and community.  7thOnline's web-centric solution suite encompasses sophisticated visual and quantitative merchandising and assortment planning tools, powerful analytical and optimization engines, and automatic order transmission capabilities in multiple formats.  7thOnline's collaborative capabilities enable real-time sharing of key business information, both internally between colleagues and externally with trading partners, resulting in better-matched supply and demand.  Customer results include higher sell-thru and lower markdowns through better assortments at the door level, better inventory matching due to earlier supply/demand visibility, shorter cycle times due to the streamlined process, and reduced operational costs resulting from significantly reduced administrative tasks and error rates.