LONDON, Oct. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Red Brick(TM) Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: REDB),
The Data Warehouse Company(TM), today announced that Allders International, a
United Kingdom-based retail organization with 82 duty free shops in 33
locations, has chosen Red Brick Warehouse as the foundation for a data
warehousing project within its duty free operation.
    Following a three-month pilot of Red Brick Warehouse, Allders committed to
build a full-scale data warehouse for its buying and merchandising department.
The new system is being used to perform sales analysis and inventory
management based on stock information captured from all of Allders' duty free
outlets at airports and cross-channel ferries.
    According to David Stone, business systems manager for Allders, the system
already started paying for itself at the pilot stage.  "In the first month of
the trial alone, we were able to recoup more than #60,000 (US $94,000) of our
investment in hard cash savings.  We expect that the project will pay for
itself within four to five months of operation.
    "Red Brick Warehouse has far exceeded all of our expectations in
delivering information into a buying and merchandising operation," added
Stone.  "The system has fundamentally changed the way buying and merchandising
look at, deal with and manage information."
    Allders was looking for a system with superior query processing
performance which could scale to handle future decision support applications.
    "Allders didn't need to go through a lengthy technical evaluation of all
the products on the market, because they were satisfied that Red Brick has a
track record of building successful data warehouses," said Gary Smith,
managing director of European operations for Red Brick.  "Allders' choice
demonstrates how well-suited Red Brick's data warehousing solutions are for
the retail industry."

    Data Warehousing Application Targets Increased Profitability
    Allders International runs tax-free outlets throughout Europe, employs
1,500 people and reported an annual revenue of #450 million (US $704 million)
in 1995.
    In the duty free environment, where shelf space is at a premium,
understanding which products perform best at certain locations is vital to
maximize profitability.  By combining information on current stock levels and
the relative performance of individual products, management can quickly build
up a picture of the most appropriate products to stock at one location.
    The new system will enable Allders to make significant savings by
eliminating costly stock-outs and overstocking and by highlighting its most
profitable product lines.  Understanding how different products from specific

suppliers perform also gives Allders a great advantage when it comes to
negotiating competitive deals.
    The Red Brick Warehouse-based data warehouse runs on hardware supplied by
Sun Microsystems, and users access the system via a Business Objects front-end
environment.  An OLTP system based on Progress supplies the data warehouse
with operational information.

    About Red Brick Systems
    Red Brick Systems is the leading provider of data warehouse products and
service.  The company, with headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif., specializes in
software products used for fast, accurate and confident business
decision-making on large client/server databases.
    NOTE:  Red Brick and logo is a registered trademark, and Red Brick and The
Data Warehouse Company are trademarks, of Red Brick Systems, Inc.  All other
trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective
holders.

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