ADC: Meet Our Partners

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Wild Oats Markets licenses ADC's InterScale Enterprise System

Allows the 100-store chain to change price, item and label information on Ethernet scales from HQ directly over the WAN without in-store software

TAMPA, Fla. (Feb. 22nd, 2003) - ADC, Inc., a leading provider of data communication
technology to the supermarket industry, announced today it has licensed the Enterprise version of its InterScale scales management system to Wild Oats Markets Inc., a nationwide chain of natural and organic food stores.

The system allows the Boulder, Colo.- based chain to manage its entire estate of Ethernet scales in its 100 stores, which are located in 26 states and in Canada.

InterScale, which uses a company's existing intranet or Wide Area Network (WAN) to transmit future-dated item, price and label information to scales and barcode label printers in all perishables departments, works with all scales regardless of brand and communication protocol. The system licensed to Wild Oats includes technology that allows the system to work exclusively with newer Ethernet scales, without having to handle older serial scales, enabling a pioneering implementation architecture.

Wild Oats senior management was familiar with ADC's InterScale system because versions were already in use by some of its subsidiaries: Henry's, a 15-store U.S.-based chain; and Caper's, a small Canadian chain. Both Henry's and Caper's were acquired by Wild Oats in 1999. Wild Oats opted for a chain-wide version after observing the Henry's and Caper's versions in operation.

The Wild Oats system contains architecture that allows the system to work with the newer Ethernet scales, which can be connected to the central InterScale system via Wild Oat's intranet/WAN without the need for in-store scales management software.

"This is the way of the future, and ADC is leading the way," said ADC President Stephen Loveridge.

"InterScale has always been a multi-brand or scale-neutral system, working with all scales regardless of manufacturer or communication protocol," said Loveridge. "The Wild Oats implementation proves that InterScale can work with remote Ethernet scales, sequential or parallel, and with scales measuring in either pounds or kilograms."

Previously, serially communicating scales required the scales management system to have an in-store installation of scale server software. Connectivity was constrained because serial cabling running from server to scale could not exceed certain lengths. The development of wired and wireless Ethernet scales means that the in-store scale server software and hard-wired connections are no longer needed.

"Ethernet scales communicate at least 10 times faster than serial scales," Loveridge said. "But the major benefits of Ethernet, particularly wireless Ethernet, scales is the standardization and increased reliability of connection. They spray water in those meat and seafood departments and that could lead to connector corrosion issues in hard-wired serial scale networks."

The installation means Wild Oats can manage scale data centrally for the first time - until now, scale data management was handled by individual department managers.

"Wild Oats had the luxury of not having legacy serial scales in its stores, allowing us to implement a 'zero-client' solution directly to their Ethernet scales from one central server without any in-store application software. This will greatly reduce the administration tasks of the store systems support group when compared to a traditional scales management implementation," said Loveridge.

"Wild Oats has reported a tangible return on its investment in InterScale. Of course, that pleases us - our focus is helping our customers gain significant bottom line benefits in fresh food operations."

Significant technical challenges had to be overcome. Hosting load or maintenance batches to 10 scales per store in over 100 stores, all from one central server, meant that the program could no longer communicate to scales sequentially.

"Communicating to 1,000 scales one after the other would take a prohibitively long time. In addition to making the software communicate concurrently to multiple scales, we also had to manage the issues of communication integrity posed by such long network paths," said Loveridge. "Our experience has shown that just because an Ethernet scale communicates fine on a Local Area Network (LAN) in a lab, does not mean it will work robustly on a distributed intranet."

InterScale hosts pricing, ingredient, label format and graphics data from a single scale-agnostic source to supermarket scales and bar code label printers. In the same fashion, production data can be gathered regularly and automatically from the scales. Intervention by in-store personnel is unnecessary.

Sales and special product promotions can also be managed: Item prices can be lowered at a pre-determined time, then automatically raised at the end of the promotion.

ADC's InterScale system is relied upon by more than 60 supermarket companies and 3,500 individual stores nationwide and in seven countries.

-0-

About ADC, Inc.:
Founded in 1989, Tampa-based ADC, Inc. specializes in the development of data management and communications solutions for the supermarket industry. The company's InterScale software suite is a global technology leader in the management of supermarket bar code printing scales. ADC continues to build on the InterScale synergies, developing perishable and fresh food management systems that translate InterScale raw production data into meaningful management information both in the store and at corporate. ADC is exploring ways to use its web-based, distributed device management architecture with wireless hand-held user interfaces in other application areas in and beyond the retail sector. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.ad-c.com.

About Wild Oats Markets:
Wild Oats Markets, Inc. is a nationwide chain of natural and organic food markets in the U.S. and Canada. With annual sales of nearly $900 million, the company currently operates 100 stores in 24 states and British Columbia. The company's natural food stores include Wild Oats Natural Marketplace, Henry's Marketplace, Nature's - a Wild Oats Market, Sun Harvest Farms and Capers Community Markets. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.wildoats.com.