Less than two months after the launch of its European operation, NetObjects has signed an agreement with Principal Distribution to distribute its product portfolio in the UK. Principal is particularly experienced in the Mac, desktop publishing and design environments and is seen as the perfect choice for NetObjects as it complements the market coverage already achieved by its existing value added distributor, Unipalm.

Commenting on the agreement, Ken Parkinson, European sales and marketing director, NetObjects Inc. said, Our initial strategy was to select value added distributors who were capable of investing their resources in building brand awareness and relationships with early adopter resellers and end-users. Now, however, our brand is well known and sales have reached the point where a broader market approach is required.

Unipalm has already achieved strong sales in the corporate market through corporate resellers and system integrators. Principal, on the other hand, has strong relationships with mail order resellers and specialist graphics resellers where a design tool like NetObjects Fusion can co-exist with DTP tools.

NetObjects is further establishing its European operation by hiring additional sales and technical staff. The company has recently recruited Chris Pugh to the position of evangelist, an Apple job description which encompasses pre-sales support, product marketing and influencing. He is a qualified Lotus certified consultant, Microsoft MSCE and previously worked at Softech Consultants, Stream (Corporate Software and Technology) and IBM. Tamara Grace has also joined NetObjects as European channel account manager. She holds a degree in Spanish, French and German and previously worked in the European office of Traveling Software and other pan-European operations.

These additional resources will allow NetObjects to manage the needs of its growing international distribution network and work more closely with the corporate resellers and mail order resellers. The company has recently expanded distribution outside of the Internet strongholds of Germany, UK and Scandinavia to sign distributors in Italy, Spain, Holland and France, for example, and its aim is to provide the channel with more training, support and resources for customer presentations, seminars and conferences.

Far from abandoning its indirect channel strategy, NetObjects is strengthening it in preparation for forthcoming product releases such as the company s group web authoring tool, TeamFusion. As Parkinson concludes, Our new product TeamFusion is based on client server technology and encompasses many of the attributes of document management. Resellers and customers will require more support during the evaluation and throughout the sales process: it is for this reason that we are hiring additional resources.

Notes to editors:
NetObjects is committed to supplying innovative products that automate and simplify the process of designing, authoring, publishing and updating web sites. These are aimed not only at professional web site designers but also at user companies who are maintaining their own sites. Their appeal in an ever-expanding market is such that NetObjects has already attracted major funding from IBM, AT&T Ventures and other major corporate and private investors. For more information, please visit NetObjects World Wide Web site at http://www.netobjects.com.