March, 1996

Pointcarre to be Foundation Software for Monarch Systems
Monarch development to focus on knit, complementary software

Glendale, NY - "It doesn't make sense to reinvent the wheel," says David Matsil, Managing Director, explaining Monarch's recent migration to Pointcarre as its foundation weave, knit, and print software for Monarch Design Systems. Pointcarre is manufactured by the French company of the same name. "We were incredibly impressed by Pointcarre's powerful capabilities. We realized that it made far more sense for us to sell Pointcarre than play catch up with our own overlapping software development," Mr. Matsil adds. "We will concentrate our software efforts on enhancing our CAM program for knitting - knitting, after all, is where Monarch built its reputation - complementary software, such as Monarchive^TM, and on "off-the-shelf" software packages.

Retail, or "off-the-shelf" software is a completely new direction for Monarch, but by no means is the company abandoning development of it's more sophisticated established software. "We want to emphasize that this in no way affects the on-going development of our high-end software for our existing customers. Our retail software will complement our high-end software, not replace it. The retail products are narrow in scope, basically excelling in a few specific functions."

Monarch is launching three retail software products: ColorCharter^TM, a software utility which automatically generates reference color charts from color printers, resulting in predictable color on printouts; Plaids & Stripes^TM, a Photoshop plug-in which instantly generates simple to complex plaid and stripe patterns within Adobe Photoshop©; and FashionFindings^TM, an extensive library of editable electronic fashion and textiles clip art.

The driving force behind these changes was simple: better products for Monarch customers (existing customers on maintenance will be upgraded to Pointcarre at no charge, including two free days of classroom training), and placing simple CAD software within reach of every graphic designer. "The migration to Pointcarre will allow us to concentrate our own development efforts, instead of trying to be all things to everyone," says Mr. Matsil. "Pointcarre gives us a dynamite solution for our design and woven manufacturing customers. Our own developers will create the same for our knit manufacturing customers. And we believe the retail software will serve as a stepping stone to our complete systems and more sophisticated software for the 'CAD beginners'."