Leading Retail and CPG Companies Substantiate Link Between
            Business Success and Data Warehouse RDBMS Performance

    DCI DATA WAREHOUSE CONFERENCE, ORLANDO, Fla., Feb. 25, 1997 /PRNewswire/
-- Red Brick(R) Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: REDB), The Data Warehouse Company(TM),
today said its successful data warehouse customers in the retail and consumer
packaged goods (CPG) industries affirm that database performance is the most
critical factor for success in data warehousing and through their own
evaluations have concluded that Red Brick is the data warehouse database
performance leader.
    Red Brick maintains that one of the most consistent conclusions of
successful data warehouse users is the irrefutable link they make between
database performance and their organizations' ability to maximize quantifiable
business benefits from their data warehouse applications.
    Retailers face extremely tight profit margins with which to measure
business success.  Their data warehouse projects represent one of the ways in
which they can optimize and get better returns on that profit margin.
Merchandisers have implemented successful Red Brick-based data warehouses to
manage programs such as efficient consumer response (ECR), category
management, "market-of-one," and mail list management.
    Seasonality, shelf space determinations and inventory turns present
difficult management decisions.  Several leading merchandisers have selected
Red Brick's relational database (RDBMS) designed specifically for data
warehousing to boost the performance of their data warehouse applications and
achieve significant business benefits.
    "We're excited to see our growth and success in the retail and CPG
industries," said Chris Erickson, president and CEO of Red Brick.  "Over the
past several years, we've delivered real value to retailers, who have commonly
implemented their Red Brick-based data warehouse projects within 30 to 90
says.  With our exclusive focus on data warehousing, we're able to get our
retail customers productive quickly in their data warehouse projects, leading
to a faster return on investment."
    (See separate announcement about Red Brick's "Performance is
Everything(TM)" initiative announced today.)
    A partial list of Red Brick's data warehouse customers in retail and CPG
includes Bil Mar Foods, Circle K Stores, ConAgra Frozen Foods, Dominick's
Finer Foods, Estee Lauder, Food Lion, General Mills, Harris Teeter, H.E.B.
Grocery Company, Land O'Lakes, Peapod, Riser Foods, Sara Lee Bakery and
Shoppers Drug Mart.
    Food Lion
    Food Lion, Inc., one of the nation's largest supermarket chains with more
than 1,114 stores in 14 states, is based in Salisbury, N.C.  Food Lion chose
Red Brick for its data warehouse applications in category management and
financial management, among other areas.
    "We face a very competitive grocery market," said Jake Parrott, business
analysis manager at Food Lion.  "Red Brick's ability to quickly manage and
produce results from our specific data puts us ahead of our competitors in
strategic decisions we have to make daily.  Red Brick Warehouse gives our
users the flexibility to analyze data from several dimensions as well as to
meet our technical needs and performance requirements, and for the right
price.  I believe we have chosen a very strong data warehouse product for our
business."

    Land O'Lakes
    Land O'Lakes is a $3.5 billion food and agricultural cooperative based in
Minnesota.  Providing quick information on scanner data, its Red Brick-based
data warehouse helps the company set pricing strategies, control trade
spending dollars and make successful decisions on where and how to run
promotions.
    "Our traditional transaction systems didn't have, or make visible, the
information that the data warehouse does," said Dave Nyce, business systems
manager at Land O'Lakes.  "With the data warehouse, our brand managers have
been able to easily uncover information that flagged us to make changes on
product pricing, and then quickly put those changes into action.  We are
getting immediate value from the data warehouse by being able to focus on the
information needed to manage our business."

    Longs Drug Stores
    With more than 300 stores throughout the Western United States, Longs Drug
Stores has a substantial amount of business in retail and pharmaceutical sales
to manage.  Currently, Longs has a sophisticated sales tracking and analysis
system running on Red Brick Warehouse and is developing category management
and data mining systems to build its customer knowledge and affinity programs.
     "Longs' successful fact-based merchandising strategy is built on the
technology provided by our Red Brick-based data warehouse," said Brian
Kilcourse, CIO at Longs Drug Stores.  "We face very tight margins in
retailing, and being able to make smart merchandising decisions is directly
related to the performance of our decision support system.  We are achieving
more targeted ordering, lower inventory levels and a lower cost of goods
overall.  Red Brick has been key in helping us be the best drug store in
town."

    Nine West Group Inc.
    Nine West Group Inc. is a leading designer, developer and marketer of
quality, fashionable women's footwear and accessories.  Its footwear and
accessories are sold to more than 7,000 department, specialty and independent
retail stores in more than 16,000 locations and through 943 of its own retail
stores.  In addition to its flagship Nine West label, the company's nationally
recognized brands include Easy Spirit, Enzo Angiolini, Calico, Bandolino,
Selby, 9 & Co., Amalfi, Westies and Pappagallo.
     Nine West relies on an efficient data warehouse to maintain its ability
to respond quickly to changing fashion trends and to provide timely and
reliable service to its customers.  "We believe our Red Brick system will
provide more timely sales data and stock availability while freeing up
expensive mainframe CPU cycle time," said Bob Forte, senior vice president of
MIS at Nine West.  "We expect the system to reduce pattern-recognition
response times from days to minutes."

    About Red Brick Systems, Inc.
    Red Brick Systems, Inc., based in Los Gatos, Calif., is the industry's
fastest growing database company and the leading provider of high-performance
relational database products for data warehousing.  Its flagship product, Red
Brick Warehouse 5.0, is the world's fastest and most scalable relational
database for data warehousing, including data marts, online analytical
processing (OLAP) and data mining.  Red Brick customers are successful because
the company's high-performance products and service enable more users to
analyze more data and make better decisions faster.
    Information about Red Brick is available on the World Wide Web at
http://www.redbrick.com.  News releases and corporate background information
may also be retrieved by fax.  For an index of available materials, please
call (800) 758-5804, and enter PIN #105756.
    Red Brick and the Red Brick logo are registered trademarks, and The Data
Warehouse Company and Performance is Everything are trademarks of Red Brick
Systems, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property
of their respective holders.

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