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DIYonline.com Announces
Contractor Referral Alliance and Joint Marketing Initiatives With Homestore.com
TUCSON, AZ– August 22, 2000 – DIYonline.com,
the Internet's premier custom home improvement project design site for Do-It-Yourselfers,
announced today that they have entered into a professional contractor referral and co-branding
alliance as part of a larger joint marketing initiative with
Homestore.com.
The new relationship will allow DIYonline.com to
gain widespread exposure to visitors on the Homestore.com family of
web sites, providing tremendous marketing opportunities and unprecedented reach to highly
qualified home improvement consumers. Homestore.com will also become
the preferred provider of professional referral services for
DIYonline.com's fast-growing worldwide community of home improvement
and remodeling enthusiasts. Homestore.com (Nasdaq: HOMS) is the
world's leading home and real estate network on the Internet.
The marketing initiative involves reciprocal online marketing activities,
co-branding opportunities, tool licensing, and the referrals to qualified contractors.
"We feel that this strategic alliance with
Homestore.com will play a substantial role in the overall branding
and marketing efforts for DIYonline.com. It will also offer both
companies excellent opportunities for highly-targeted referrals and uniquely-qualified sales
leads," said Michael H. Heisler, CEO and President of
DIYonline.com. "This is the first of many strategic affiliations which we are pursuing
where both companies bring inherent value and many comparative strengths jointly to the table. We
certainly feel that such partnerships serve to validate and confirm the goals of our original
business model which has been designed to enable us to create the premier home improvement site on
the Internet," added Heisler.
The online marketing components are expected to boost
DIYonline.com's Web site traffic and should assist the company in
reaching their targeted goals well ahead of previous schedules. The contractor referral component
also allows DIYonline.com to complete a key component of their
business revenue model by now having access to some of the one million fully-screened,
professional home service contractors found in Homestore.com's
database.
Further, by licensing many of the company's home improvement project
calculators and material estimators, as well as developing "light" versions of their
proprietary key design tools for use on Homestore.com's Web sites,
DIYonline.com will now be well-positioned to boost site traffic
click thru rates to their flagship design tool products, and ultimately for online building
materials fulfillment, which is currently in development.
About DIYonline.com
DIYonline.com offers Do-It-Yourself consumers state-of-the-art, customized,
home project design software, free of charge online. Using the Web site's powerful design tools
and programs, visitors can custom design decks, gazebos, sprinkler systems, kitchens and baths,
and many more otherwise complicated DIY projects with the simple click of a mouse. After the exact
specifications are entered by the consumer, within 24 hours
DIYonline.com presents them with 3-D drawings of the project, easy
to follow step-by-step directions and schematics, and a complete itemized list of all required
materials and tools. A list of geo-targeted local retailers within the consumer's geographic area
where the products can be purchased is also provided. The company recently began a pilot program
in Midwest U.S. test markets which will soon give DIY consumers the ability to conveniently order
online the products they need to complete projects and have them delivered directly to their home
or business.
DIYonline.com is a privately held company with
headquarters in Tucson, Arizona and a sales and marketing office based in Lexington, Kentucky. The
site is quickly becoming a global virtual community for DIY'ers worldwide with the company's
proprietary software tools currently serving more than 120,000 registered users in South Africa,
Canada, Australia, Norway, Mexico, and the United States. The site is currently averaging more
than 1.5 million page views per month, with registered users creating more than 10,000 separate
design projects each month.
About Homestore.com
Homestore.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: HOMS) is the leading
network of sites on the Internet for home and real estate-related information, products and
services. Homestore.com, Inc.'s family of web sites includes the
Homestore.com, Realtor.com®, HomeBuilder.com,
SpringStreet.com, Remodel.com and HomeFair.com Web sites. Consumers can
view over 1.3 million new and existing homes for sale and find broker and agent services on
Realtor.com®, the official Internet site of the
National Association of Realtors®.
Consumers searching for new homes can find more than 130,000 models, new homes
and built to suit plans on HomeBuilder.com, the official new
homes site of the National Association of Home Builders. Consumers
interested in renting an apartment will find listing information from more than 45,000 properties
in more than 6,000 cities on SpringStreet.com&153;.
Homestore.com's remodeling area covers home improvement needs
for both consumers and remodeling professionals. Comprehensive moving and relocation information
on the Internet is available from HomeFair.com.
# # #
All product names, logos and "Design it yourself. Do it
yourself."
are registered trademarks of DIYonline.com.
Homestore.com, Realtor.com, HomeBuilder.com, SpringStreet.com,
Remodel.com, and HomeFair.com are all registered trademarks of
Homestore.com
This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of
Section 27A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act
of 1934, and is subject to the safe harbors created by those sections. Actual results may differ
materially. The matters discussed in this press release also involve risks and uncertainties
described from time to time in Homestore.com, Inc.'s filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC). In particular, see "Risk Factors" in the Final Prospectus included in the
Company's Registration Statement on Form S-1 declared effective by the SEC on January 26, 2000 and
also see the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1999 filed with
the SEC (http://www.sec.gov). We assume no duty to update this
information in this press release if any forward-looking statement later turns out to be
inaccurate.
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