Mattress Discounters Select Storis To Run 261 Store Chain. Largest Us Bedding Company Projects 1800 User System

Furniture World Magazine

The nation's largest bedding specialty chain, Mattress Discounters, announced that they have signed an agreement with STORIS Management Systems of Parsippany, NJ to implement the STORIS Retail Management System to run their entire U.S. operations. Mattress Discounters will implement the system on an IBM six-processor Risc 6000 System Model S-80. The nationwide integrated on-line system will include the installation of Point of Sale terminals at each store location, use of the warehouse and distribution module, and STORIS' financial solution. "We are extremely optimistic concerning the roll-out of the STORIS Solution and the significant financial and strategic benefits it will bring to our organization," stated Jim Hirshorn, Chief Financial Officer of Mattress Discounters. "We invested a significant amount of time and resources into the selection process and are very pleased with the partnership that we have formed with STORIS." In addition to the core software application, MD is considering the use of STORIS' eSTORIS internet software, (The Virtual Store, eCustomer Service, STORIS Quotation Software), EDI, credit card processing; on-line credit application to Travelers for third party credit approval, FGII (PC based financial reporting tool), EIS analytical executive reporting management tool, Automatic Truck Routing and Mapping Interface, Customer Service, PC Label Matrix and STORIS' new data mining/data warehousing software currently in production. Ira Bakst, co-founder and Sr. Vice President of STORIS stated, "We are extremely pleased that Mattress Discounter's selected STORIS to handle their current and future data processing requirements. This installation will be our fourth to exceed 1000 users and is yet another endorsement of our focus exclusively on Big Ticket Retail." STORIS was also contracted to perform both project management and change management consulting services for the duration of the project. MD's current major markets include Washington DC, Baltimore, Richmond, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Boston, Detroit, Denver, Tampa, Miami, Orlando and Chicago. They market under the name Bedding Experts in Chicago. The company plans to add 40 stores this year. The IBM-S-80 will be installed in mid to late July. STORIS began the implementation services immediately after the signing of the Agreement, projecting a live date in the first Market/Distribution Center in January 2001 with a rollout of all markets within an 18 month period. IBM recently benchmarked the IBM S-80. The TPC – C benchmark, used to evaluate commercial based systems, was conducted on a 24 Processor S-80 System resulting in 126,671 transactions per minute. This surpassed the latest results from Sun and Hewlett Packard. A Sun "Starfire" Enterprise 10000 server with 64 processors could handle 115,395 TPM, while HP retested its V2500 servers and was able to show 102,024.