GNC Offers More Online Business Services to Franchisees

PITTSBURGH, May 29, 2001 - General Nutrition Companies, Inc., the largest specialty retailer of nutritional supplements, today announced that its franchisees can now perform vital accounting, inventory and training functions online through the company’s intranet system. GNC will unveil the latest improvements to its Genesis system, one of the only franchising intranets in the dietary supplement industry, at the company’s 2001 International Franchise Convention in Orlando, Florida, June 15-21, 2001.

Genesis, first installed in 1998, has been continually upgraded to meet with GNC’s changing demands. The system was created by IFX Online, the leading applications service provider for franchisor-franchisee communications systems.

This year, GNC will add the following features to Genesis:

Interactive account statements that will allow franchisees to pay invoices online.
Franchisee will have access to product training modules and can search for product information by number, key word or UPC code.
Sophisticated tools to better manage their business through an SKU Retail Data section that displays daily, weekly and monthly sales history, daily sales by item, customer count and sales for a specific vendor.
Direct-order capabilities from third party vendors.
The ability for franchisees to customize and edit their own websites based upon a template that GNC provides.

Currently, GNC uses Genesis to communicate with franchisees by posting marketing manuals, newsletters, marketing materials, camera-ready advertisements, forms, calendars, opinion polls and product information. The site, which is secure and available only to authorized participants, is free to all GNC franchisees and accessible twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, eliminating time and money spent on costly mailings and phone messages.

Russell L. Cooper, GNC Franchising Senior Vice President and General Manager, said, “Genesis brings the benefits of Internet-enabled communications to our franchisees, and is a vital part of our support system to the more than 800 franchisees who currently use it. Now we are adding vital functions that extend the value of Genesis beyond franchisor-franchisee communications to providing franchisees with user-friendly business tools that will help them meet their financial objectives by dramatically improving their control over accounting, inventory and training as well as providing resources for their own websites.