Cosmetic Brands Clinique and jane iredale, and Specialty Retailer Costume Craze, Add to DecisionStep’s Growing Roster of E-Commerce Customers

CHICAGO — June 8, 2010 – DecisionStep announced today it added Clinique Laboratories, jane iredale and Costume Craze, one of the world’s largest online costume retailers, as customers of its ShopTogether social commerce solutions. Over the past year, DecisionStep has continued to build relationships with leading e-commerce brands, including Mattel, Charlotte Russe and Buy.com, among others. 

ShopTogether instantly adds a social layer to a retailer’s website, increasing the amount of time shoppers spend there and ultimately increasing order values and sales.  Meanwhile, visitors have a more engaging and fun experience with the ability to get an opinion, either in real time or later through comments on their social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, from the people who matter most in the purchase decision. 

“In just one year since our last visit to IRCE, we’ve witnessed significantly increased demand for enabling social interactions within e-commerce sites,” said John Jackson, President and CEO of DecisionStep. “We appreciate the opportunity to work with some of the most innovative brands, and the new technologies we plan to roll out in the coming months are based in large part on what we’ve learned from them.” 

iPad Compatibility

DecisionStep also announced that ShopTogether will be iPad™ compatible, beginning with Costume Craze and rolling over the coming weeks to its other customers, giving consumers the ability to share a shopping experience with friends and family, no matter where they are or what Internet-capable device they use.  

How ShopTogether Works

ShopTogether combines the fun and social aspects of traditional shopping with the benefits of social networking, turning an otherwise solitary web visit into a dynamic, interactive experience. The ShopTogether product suite consists of three easy-to-implement, customizable toolbar applications:  ShopTogether Friends, Crowd and Concierge.  ShopTogether Friends lets consumers connect with their friends on a retailer’s site through the major social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, or email or IM to chat, view each other’s products, collect mutual favorites and share ideas that lead to buying decisions. ShopTogether Concierge adds real-time visual collaboration to customer support experts who can encourage purchases and steer shoppers in the right direction. And ShopTogether Crowd lets site visitors track the shopping and buying behavior of everyone else online for a minute-by-minute, real-time look at what’s hot. In addition to these three applications, DecisionStep offers a fully customizable version of its capabilities with an API that lets retailers integrate ShopTogether functionality on their website as they see fit.

To see a demonstration of ShopTogether, speak with DecisionStep company representatives or get a sneak-peek at the DecisionStep’s new mobile capabilities, please stop by booth #424.

About DecisionStep

Headquartered outside of Washington DC, DecisionStep helps online businesses succeed by providing hosted, innovative solutions that let consumers make better decisions faster. DecisionStep’s revolutionary application called ShopTogether provides real-time, social interaction to shoppers so they can be part of each other’s web experience and decision-making process, increasing order value for retailers and giving them the confidence they need to buy.  Visit DecisionStep online at www.decisionstep.com.

MattelShop.Com Offers Shoppers Easy Gift-Giving Solutions and Delivers a Social Online Shopping Experience

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (October 22, 2009) –Mattel, Inc. today, announced the launch of MattelShop.com, an online shopping destination committed to delivering play everyday by offering a complete selection of Mattel products, informative content, and an immersive social shopping experience.

“We have developed a unique online shopping destination that is playful, social and informative”, said Chuck Scothon, General Manager & Senior Vice President, Mattel Digital Network.  “The MattelShop.com serves as a research and shopping tool allowing parents, grandparents and gift givers alike to choose the best toys for children this holiday season.”

At Mattel, we conduct research just about every day of the year to better understand kids and parents.  Combining our rich proprietary research and an understanding of how kids play along with how consumers shop online, MattelShop.com is designed to be easy and intuitive for every shopper.  From the moment you land on the site, Mattel’s own Dr. Michael Shore, Vice President of Worldwide Consumer Insights, takes you through a simple guided tour of the site’s key features and general layout.

The MattelShop.com features innovative tools including ShopTogether®, a social shopping tool from DecisionStep® that allows anyone to browse the site together with family and friends regardless of whether they are across town or around the world. The ShopTogether® feature allows shoppers to chat in real time regarding the toys they like most, just like one would do on a shopping trip.

The site includes a complete catalog of Mattel’s popular brands such as Barbie® and Hot Wheels® plus many other toys, games and licensed products from the entire Mattel Brands portfolio which includes favorites such as Matchbox® and Polly Pocket™. Shoppers are can choose to shop by age, gender, play preference, or find the hottest new products on the big or small screen from Mattel’s entertainment related portfolio.

MattelShop.com ecommerce innovations include:

ShopTogether: MattelShop.com shoppers will be able to invite friends and family to browse the website with them, so they can see what products others are looking at and “talk” about them at the same time using real-time chat.

ConciseClick: When watching videos, this rollover-and-click technology provides a description, price and opportunity to drop products immediately into a shopping cart. 

Play Pattern Navigation:  Shoppers can navigate the site based on child’s play behaviors. 

Shoppers can also become fans of the MattelShop.com on Facebook to get the inside scoop on what’s hot for the holidays,  follow the Mattel Shop on Twitter for updates and special promotions and subscribe to the Mattel Shop YouTube Channel to view product content.

About Mattel

Mattel, Inc., (NASDAQ: MAT, www.mattel.com) is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of toys and family products. The Mattel family is comprised of such best-selling brands as Barbie®, the most popular fashion doll ever introduced, Hot Wheels®, Matchbox®, American Girl®, Radica® and TycoR/C®, as well as Fisher-Price® brands, including Little People®, Power Wheels® and a wide array of entertainment-inspired toy lines. In 2009, Mattel is recognized among the “100 Best Corporate Citizens,” as one of the “World’s Most Ethical Companies” and as one of FORTUNE Magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For.” With worldwide headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., Mattel employs approximately 30,000 people in 43 countries and territories and sells products in more than 150 nations. Mattel’s vision is to be the world’s premier toy brands—today and tomorrow.

Buy.com is the First Top-50 e-Tailer to Support Real-Time Interactive Shopping

Beltsville, MD (June 15, 2009) - DecisionStep^® today announced a partnership to deploy its ShopTogether^® social shopping application on leading e-commerce site Buy.com and co-develop future iterations with the top-50 e-tailer. Until now, one of the biggest barriers for online retailing has been the inability for shoppers to easily and quickly get opinions from friends and family on potential purchases.  Since an overwhelming majority of consumers trust a friend’s recommendation over expert opinions, critics’ reviews or advertising¹, the solitary nature of online shopping and the inability to quickly and easily get a peer’s opinion can be frustrating for consumers and potentially costly for retailers.

The ShopTogether technology removes that barrier by allowing one or more people to share an online shopping experience in real-time, from computers across town or around the world. Beyond link-sharing or screen-sharing, ShopTogether lets users simultaneously view products together and chat.  Customers view and use the site just as before-but with the added benefit of connecting instantly to their friends through Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, e-mail or an instant message window. Once the invitation is accepted, ShopTogether joins users for a real-time shopping experience. Shoppers can chat, share product views, compare items and even create a mutual favorites list of the items they like.

“We’ve found that replicating the fun and interactive aspects of offline shopping in the online environment improves the customer experience and the retailer’s business metrics,” said John Jackson, CEO of DecisionStep.  “The ShopTogether partnership with Buy.com is real evidence that pioneering online retailers see value in connecting their customers in real time.”

“Buy.com is on the forefront of developing unique programs to improve the online shopping experience and in using social media tools to connect with our customers, so exploring a ShopTogether implementation is a natural evolution for us,” said Neel Grover, President and CEO, Buy.com.  “DecisionStep’s innovative approach to help online shoppers get opinions from their friends and family makes the company an ideal partner to help us take the Buy.com shopping experience to a new level.”

About DecisionStep

Headquartered outside of Washington DC, DecisionStep is a technology company focused on interactive decision-support tools.  The company’s mission is to make online businesses successful by providing hosted, innovative solutions that help consumers make better decisions faster. DecisionStep’s revolutionary solution called ShopTogether provides real-time, social interaction to consumers so they can be part of each other’s web experience and decision - increasing order value for retailers and giving a shopper the confidence they need to buy!  Visit
DecisionStep online at www.decisionstep.com.

About Buy.com

Buy.com is a retail marketplace with more than 12 million customer accounts, focused on providing its customers with a rewarding shopping experience and a broad selection of high-quality technology and entertainment retail goods at competitive prices. Buy.com offers millions of products in a range of categories, including consumer electronics, computer hardware and software, cell phones, books, music, videos, games, toys, bags, fragrance, home and outdoor, baby, jewelry, shoes, apparel and sporting goods. Founded in June of 1997, Buy.com is located in Aliso Viejo, California. Buy.com® and The Internet Superstore^TM are trademarks of Buy.com Inc. Buy.com currently competes with a variety of companies that can be divided into two broad categories: (i) retailers and ecommerce marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon and Wal-Mart and (ii) specialty retailers or manufacturers such as Barnes & Noble, Best Buy and Dell.

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1 Recommendations from family and friends trump all other consumer touchpoints when it comes to influencing purchases, according to ZenithOptimedia. (AdAge, April, 2008); “Person like me” still most trusted source for information about a company and, therefore, products. (Edelman Trust Barometer, November 2007); Consumers trust friends above experts when it comes to product recommendations (65% trust friends, 27% trust experts, 8% trust celebrities). (Yankelovich); Online social network users were three times more likely to trust their peers’ opinions over advertising when making purchase decisions. (“Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape,” JupiterResearch, March 2007)