Worcester, Mass., —June 27, 2002—bulbs.com, a privately held B2B e-commerce light bulb distributor, today announced the opening of its east coast distribution center in Worcester; a facility that replaces the Michigan contract warehouse that had served as the primary stocking and shipping location during the first three years of the company’s existence.

The facility is located at 100 Beacon Street, a site previously occupied by Furniture.com and Empire Furniture and dates back to the early 1900’s when it served as a manufacturing site for one of Worcester’s many textile producers.

"This remains an exciting time for bulbs.com," says Steve Rothschild, CEO. "When I founded bulbs.com in 1999, contracting our warehouse services made perfect sense. Now that we have established a solid yet growing base of business, we’ve gained the ability to more precisely calculate the amount of space and labor resources required to receive, stock and pick product to fulfill customer orders. The move to the Beacon Street facility will bring the warehousing and logistics function of the business completely under our control. This will ultimately reduce our cost and enable the company to continue to improve its order-to-delivery cycle for a majority of customers. Future plans include the establishment of a west coast facility that will shorten delivery time for customers that lie west of the Mississippi River."

Rothschild goes on to say, "Our clients on the east coast will benefit further by our ability to offer next day ground delivery of orders entered by 2:00 P.M. Eastern. We are particularly excited with the prospect of offering this service to businesses in Central Massachusetts. Combined with our inventory of over 5,000 SKU’s and an experienced team of telephone sales professionals, we can provide outstanding service to companies that require replacement interior and exterior lighting for offices, manufacturing and warehouse facilities, parking lots and garages, educational institutions, hotels and restaurants, retail stores and healthcare facilities. In fact, we find more of our business coming from lighting dealers who are choosing to draw from our stock rather than invest in costly inventory that may not turn on a regular basis."

At the close of 2001, bulbs.com had completed its second record-breaking year in business. While the national average for growth in the lighting industry was only 1.4% according to the National Association of Independent Lighting Distributors, bulbs.com experienced sales growth of 175% in 2001. In 2002, the company has grown at a rate of over 110% while it continues to gain new commercial clients at a rate of over 250 per month. Included among its growing list of over 6,000 corporate clients are Central Parking System, VoiceStream Wireless, Beacon Hill Furniture Stores and Samsonite Company Stores; and over 350 repeat commercial customers every month. These decentralized companies are all benefiting from bulbs.com’s fast, easy, and complete purchasing system.

About bulbs.com
bulbs.com, headquartered in Worcester, Mass. is the only online light bulb supplier to offer an easy, complete purchasing process with the eSpec searchable database and BulbTrack™ smart reordering technology. Launched in August 1999, bulbs.com is approaching its three-year anniversary with record revenues adding to a growing list of over 6,000 commercial customers in the hospitality, retail, property-management and manufacturing sectors. The company is located at 40 Jackson Street, Worcester, Mass., 01608, and can be reached by telephone at 508-363-2800 or on the Web at www.bulbs.com.