UTC RETAIL™ Announces the Completion of Southern State Cooperative Chain Wide Rollout

Rochester, January 14, 2008 - UTC RETAIL™, a leading provider of retail management solutions including software, hardware and professional services announced today that they have successfully completed a chain wide rollout at Southern States Cooperative. The Southern States project included POS, back office PC's and server hardware and deployment services including staging, integration, installation and asset disposal. The 2850 Series POS workstation was deployed providing Southern States a highly integrated unit with easy access to key components providing maximum serviceability. UTC RETAIL also developed a middleware application allowing for the integration of credit and debit authorization into Southern States legacy POS application with future integration of check authorization.

The project was managed utilizing UTC RETAIL's Service-On-Demand web portal allowing Southern States to enter and confirm store hardware configuration and equipment manifests and provided real-time access to project tasks by store location. The portal's store specific information is directly linked to UTC RETAIL's enterprise system ensuring configuration accuracy during the staging and manufacturing process. Staging and integration services were performed for a variety of store technology devices including a complete POS solution and related peripherals, back office workstations, servers, printers and print servers. These services included the loading of store IP addresses, user names and passwords, operating systems, application software, and drive mapping.

The deployment included the boxing and disposal of old equipment, installation of new equipment, transferring store data, databases and store configuration files onto the new equipment and thoroughly testing all store hardware and communications. UTC RETAIL also provided extensive training to Southern States Help Desk to ensure a smooth transition to the new store systems.

"We couldn't be more pleased with the results" said Karen Lankford, Vice President of IS for Southern States. "UTC RETAIL provided great management and leadership throughout the project which was completed on time and on budget. Their retail expertise was a critical factor in solving key business issues making us more efficient and more profitable as an organization in the future. UTC RETAIL was with out a doubt the right choice for Southern States and will continue as a critical partner to help us advance the POS technology."

About Southern States Cooperative

Headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, Southern States is one of the nation's largest agricultural cooperatives. Serving more than 300,000 producer-members, it provides a range of farm inputs, including fertilizer, seed, feed and pet food, animal health supplies and petroleum products, as well as other items for the farm and home. The cooperative's distribution network includes more than 1,200 retail outlets in an area that extends from Maine to the Gulf Coast and as far west as Kentucky.

About UTC RETAIL™

UTC RETAIL was formed when Ultimate Technology, a leader in POS hardware and service solutions acquired Purple Cactus Technologies, a provider of multi-channel retail automation software in October of 2007.

UTC RETAIL is a leader in providing seamlessly integrated retail management solutions including software, hardware and professional services to the specialty retail market. Our retail software solutions include Multi-Channel Enterprise and Merchandising, Store Automation, Planning, Loyalty and Retail Management enabling specialty retailers to increase sales, lower costs and build competitive advantage. In addition to best in class software solutions, UTC RETAIL provides a complete set of branded hardware solutions and comprehensive professional service offerings, providing retailers a single point of contact and accountability for all of their retail management solutions. We're UTC RETAIL. We're retail automation experts. It's all we do and we do it better than anyone else. For more information on UTC RETAIL, visit www.utcretail.com

For more information, contact Kathy Manners, Marketing Communications Specialist, at 585-742-5245 or by e-mail at kmanners@utcretail.com