LaGarde Expands Global Operations, Establishes UK Office

LaGarde, a premier global provider of e-commerce software, has expanded operations to include a UK office located in Birmingham, England. LaGarde will establish a level one customer service operation in the Birmingham office. Additional plans call for a full scale European sales office, which will service web hosting partners, the retail software channel, and direct customer sales.

Lawrence, KS - LaGarde, a premier global provider of e-commerce software, has expanded operations to include a UK office located in Birmingham, England. In addition to opening the Birmingham office, LaGarde is in discussions with UK-based investors regarding plans to significantly enhance LaGardes position in serving the e-commerce needs of European businesses.

LaGarde will establish a level one customer service operation in the Birmingham office. Additional plans call for a full scale European sales office, which will service web hosting partners, the retail software channel, and direct customer sales.

LaGarde has been working to extend its reach into global markets since its inception and now has a customer base of more than 20,000 StoreFront web stores in over 70 countries, with 13 percent of all sales coming from international customers. LaGarde is also a finalist for the 2001 Kansas Governors Exporter of the Year Award, which recognizes a Kansas company that has demonstrated marketing prowess outside the United States.

In order to carve a niche for itself in the global marketplace, LaGarde has focused on the development of e-commerce solutions that meet the varied needs of international merchants. Support for all windows-supported languages and currency types, foreign currency conversion, varied payment methods and two-tier tax systems make it easy for merchants to do business around the world.

LaGarde has formed strategic partnerships with Barclays and Planet Payment to integrate support into the StoreFront platform for real-time credit card processing for foreign merchants. A recent partnership with UK-based ezeehelp, Limited allowed LaGarde to incorporate support for the ezeehelp CRM solution into the StoreFront platform. LaGarde also has several European business partners, including XHost and Netcetera, which provide its international customer base access to local StoreFront-related hosting and development services.

"Several key European markets are poised for extremely rapid growth in the e-commerce sector over the next two years," said Bob LaGarde, founder and CEO of LaGarde. We are looking forward to being in place to accommodate these growing markets with our StoreFront e-commerce software solutions."

LaGardes new Birmingham office is located at:

LaGarde (UK)
1st Floor
Waterlinks House
Richard Street
Aston
Birmingham
UK
B7 4AA
Phone: +44 (0)121 333 1184

About LaGarde
LaGarde, Inc. (www.lagarde.com) is an e-commerce software development firm headquartered in Lawrence, Kansas. Its focus is to provide business applications software for the Internet, and its StoreFront suite of e-commerce solutions has been providing web merchants and developers with powerful e-commerce tools since 1998. With a rapidly growing customer base of more than 20,000 StoreFront web stores in over 70 countries, LaGarde is leading the field of Microsoft FrontPage e-commerce software providers. LaGarde recently extended its international scope, establishing an office presence in the United Kingdom last month. The recent release of StoreFront 5.0 has further expanded its reach by adding advanced product management, discounting, customer service, design, sales reporting and marketing features to the proven StoreFront line.