Myhome.com Acquires Young Marketing Group To Enhance Merchandising Department Of Site

Furniture World Magazine

MyHome.com (www.myhome.com), a leading online shopping destination for home décor and design products, announced the acquisition of the Young Marketing Group (YMG) to enhance MyHome.com's merchandising department, and the addition of merchandising veteran, Michael Slocum, to the MyHome.com team. "Diverse product selection is extremely important in the Internet space where customers have many shopping options and the opportunity to comparison shop quickly and easily. The acquisition of the Young Marketing Group demonstrates our commitment to a category-leading approach to online home products merchandising," said Zorko Jezina, vice president of merchandising at MyHome.com. Adds Deborah Blackwell, president of MyHome.com, "MyHome.com understands the importance of merchandising and has responded by forming a first-class merchandising department with real-world purchasing experience, ensuring product diversity, quality and value." With the acquisition of the Young Marketing Group, the MyHome.com merchandising team now has 135 years of combined real-world merchandising experience. YMG founder, Linda Young, started the organization more than 20 years ago, specializing in housewares and the tabletop giftware market for all major distribution channels. YMG represented many highly respected manufacturers, including Dansk, The Wilton Company and The Pomeroy Collection. Young will assume the role of MyHome.com merchandising manager, responsible for all purchasing of kitchen and bath items, décor and hardware, as well as storage and plumbing products. She brings three former staff members with her from YMG. Prior to founding YMG, Young was a home store buyer for May Company, now known as Robinson's-May. "The time was right to move the YMG staff into the Internet arena and bring our merchandising experience to an e-commerce site such as MyHome.com, a company that really understands how consumers shop for home décor products," explained Linda Young. "The manufacturer relationships we've established will help MyHome.com build credibility and foster exclusive relationships, giving customers an opportunity to buy products not available on other sites in the category." Adding further depth to MyHome.com's newly expanding merchandising team, Michael Slocum joins the company as a merchandising manager, responsible for purchasing of home furnishings, decorative items, rugs, lighting, wall art and other items in the category. Prior to MyHome.com, Slocum was a merchandise manager with Three D Bed, Bath & More, a home store with locations in Southern California, Arizona and New England. He has also worked in merchandising home products at Broadway Department stores and Robinson's-May stores. "Right now, the Internet is the place to be for the home décor marketplace. I chose to work with MyHome.com because I believe that its strategy of providing top quality Internet-friendly products with a sense of style will help it build a loyal customer base interested in seeing what MyHome.com will offer next," said Michael Slocum. "I've always worked with the big names in my career, and MyHome.com is no exception." Founded in the spring of 1999, MyHome.com is a privately-held company based in Pasadena, Calif., offering the most comprehensive home décor and design resource online. As a pioneer in its category, MyHome.com is integrating the expertise of interior design professionals into the most user-friendly shopping experience available. The company's Designer Affiliate Program provides online visibility for interior designers by showcasing their creations in an idea-rich environment and placing products in a context to help make purchase decisions easier. Leveraging the one-to-one power of the Internet to improve consumer purchase satisfaction, MyHome.com will feature Envision-It™ a technology that shows consumers how product selections will work together in the context of a virtual room, and MatchMaker™ which instantly suggests other items that coordinate with the style and color of a selected product. MyHome.com owns all of its inventory and so is able to provide complete end-to-end fulfillment and the fastest product delivery time in the category. MyHome.com has the benefit of funding, development, strategic guidance and creative support from idealab!, an integrated incubator for identifying, creating and operating Internet businesses, such as eToys (NASDAQ: ETYS), GoTo.com (NASDAQ: GOTO), NetZero (NASDAQ: NZRO) and Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch (NASDAQ: TMCS).