ENCINITAS -- April 24, 2001 -- Material Express and Border States Electric Supply have formed a partnership to fulfill orders placed through the new Border States Express web order system being provided by Material Express. The Order Express storefront product allows Border States Electric Supply to accept orders in three new online methods. First, orders can come from their personalized Border States Express web site. Second, a list of materials may be sent directly from Vision InfoSoft Corporation’s estimating and billing desktop software applications. And finally, orders may be placed from a wireless Palm VII for contractors ordering directly from the field. All orders will be placed through the web site, with the Vision products and the Palm automatically creating shopping carts ready for order placement.

Using the Border States Express web site, the entire process of getting price information and making a purchase can take place in a matter of minutes rather than playing “phone-tag” between distributor and contractor. Colleen Stempien, President of Material Express, says, “Our customers like the flexibility of ordering 24 hours a day from their home, office or in the field. They can start from the already created list of materials in the estimating desktop software for large orders or select just a few items from the drill down area of the web site. Creating customized lists of specific materials on the Web site helps to make ordering from the Palm easy and convenient.”

Border States Electric Supply is headquartered in Fargo, ND and has 22 branches in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico. For more information you may go to www.bseweb.com . For additional information on the Order Express web site go to www.materialexpress.com, click on Order Express and select View Demo Site. Material Express will also be at the national NAED meeting April 28- May 1 in Washington DC.