ShopNow.com Buys bottomdollar.com

Business-to-business e-commerce site ShopNow.com Inc. Monday bought bargain
shopping site bottomdollar.com
for $50 million in stock.

bottomdollar.com, a subsidiary of WebCentric Inc., generates more than 4
million product searches and has more than 1,000 partner sites and 20
product categories. Through bottomdollar.com, WebCentric provides
e-commerce throughout the U.S., U.K., France and Canada.

bottomdollar.com’s shopping search engine and technology will be added to
the ShopNow Network, offering visitors an efficient way to shop the ShopNow
Network by comparing key decision factors such as price, shipping cost,
merchant ratings and availability of millions of products across the
ShopNow Network.

“Integrating our commerce search engine, price and product comparison
technology into the ShopNow Network will allow visitors to make highly
informed purchase decisions on the Internet,” said Craig Johnson, WebCentric’s co-founder and chief executive officer.

“This type of empowerment to the average consumer
would be impossible in the real world. We believe this acquisition marks an
important step forward in the growth of online shopping.”

The ShopNow Network offers visitors 28 shopping categories, more than 40,000
merchants, millions of products and services, and a host of B2B e-commerce
solutions.

Adding to ShopNow.com’s (SPNW)
growth and stickiness was its deals with a number of sites. In November,
ShopNow.com snagged women’s community site SpeedyClick for $50 million. In
October, its busiest month of the year, it took an unspecified stake in
e-commerce fulfillment destination escrow.com; launched its first television
campaign; and launched banner ads.

ShopNow.com recently acquired Cortix Inc., operator of comparison shopping
services including online reviews and ratings for commerce oriented
businesses. These services will be integrated with bottomdollar.com’s
shopping search engine into the ShopNow Consumer Guides.