Newport News Catalog adds millions to bottom line with SAS® software for retail

-- For retailer, the power of SAS® means happier customers, better profitability --

NRF 95th Annual Convention and EXPO, NEW YORK (Jan. 16, 2006) – Competition in the fashion industry, especially women’s fashions, is fierce. Retailers have to be able to turn on a dime. Strategies that worked last year won’t necessarily work this year, and this year’s techniques might not work next year. To stay ahead of the trends, successful retailers require sophisticated analyses to understand their customers and gauge how well they’re being served.

SAS, the leader in business intelligence, announced today that women’s apparel retailer Newport News Catalog (www.newport-news.com) has achieved phenomenal performance improvements, high return on investment, and increased profitability through its use of SAS® solutions for customer intelligence and data integration.

“As a result of our use of SAS software, Newport News Catalog has achieved significant lift in response rates to our mailings, better targeted and more effective campaigns, and enhanced customer satisfaction and retention. All these translate into increased profitability for Newport News Catalog and millions of dollars added to the bottom line,” said Van Rhodes, manager of marketing business intelligence solutions for Newport News.

With SAS technology, marketers at Newport News Catalog can effectively track the results of more than 80 catalog campaigns plus many more Internet campaigns annually. SAS retail software brings together huge amounts of customer and marketing data and transforms it into the customer intelligence Newport News needs to better understand its customers.

“SAS solutions provide invaluable insight into our customers, including who they are, why they are buying from us, what products they do and don’t like, their preferred contact channel and preferred frequency of contact,” said Rhodes.

With this information, Newport News marketing analysts can evaluate and predict customer behavior across a campaign, a channel, a season or an entire year, then identify better, quicker ways to target customers with the most appropriate offer. These insights lead to increased customer satisfaction, catalog response rates and profitability.

Another important benefit for Newport News is the ability of SAS retail solutions – built with SAS®9 technology on the integrated, open and extensible SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform – to put the power of business intelligence and analytics in the hands of a wide variety of users, and deliver accurate, in-depth intelligence in formats suited to users’ specific needs.

For executives at Newport News, a customized point-and-click environment enables them to easily obtain answers to questions that need to be monitored on a daily basis, such as how each catalog is performing or how specific customer segments responded to the most recent mailings. Business analysts can go in and crunch the numbers to meet their unique needs, enabling them to access and analyze detailed data that tells them, for example, to whom the next catalog should be sent.

In addition to Newport News, SAS customers include hundreds of leading retailers worldwide, such as Bakers Footwear, Brooks Brothers, Burger King, Carrefour, Casino, Casual Male, The Children’s Place, Circuit City, Fakta, Federated Department Stores, Karstadt, Kohl’s, Li & Fung Retailing Group, The Limited, Lowe’s Companies, Luxottica Retail, Marks & Spencer, Office Depot, Sainsbury’s, Sport Chalet, Staples, Tesco, Too Inc., Waitrose Limited, Wal-Mart, Williams-Sonoma and 1-800-FLOWERS.COM. SAS is demonstrating its retail intelligence solutions in NRF Booth #111.

About Newport News
Newport News (http://www.newport-news.com) comforts the fashionable and dresses up the comfortable. Its namesake catalogs and Web site feature private-label women’s clothing, footwear, and accessories designed to create what the company describes as easy style. Newport News mails about 250 titles annually. Apparel (dresses, jackets, coordinates, swimwear, lingerie, and denim) makes up the large majority of Newport News’ sales..