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PARTY CITY OF ATLANTA "HEAD OVER HEELS" WITH REMOTE ONLINE TRAINING

-- Benefits have included better communication between employees and a decline in turnover --

Party City of Atlanta, Inc. is one of the fastest growing and most successful retail companies in the country. The franchisee is the largest of the Party City Corporation (NASDAQ: PCTY), based in Rockaway, New Jersey, which totals 250 locations. Party City of Atlanta owns and operates 26 stores in and around metro Atlanta and other cities in Georgia and Tennessee. With so many spread-out locations, training is an essential function for the managers, assistant managers and members of the Corporate Office in Norcross, GA.

"We used to have training sessions for management about twice a year," said Vanessa Washington, Training Manager for Party City of Atlanta. "This created a problem on two fronts- a loss of productivity by pulling the managers out of their stores to the Corporate Office, as well as a lack of training because we were sensitive to that loss of productivity."

Washington was concerned that managers were not receiving enough comprehensive training for leadership skills-- including interviewing & employee selection, as well as the diversity and sexual harassment training that protects employees and the Party City Corporation in case of a workplace incident.

In early 2004, Washington began researching remote training initiatives. Party City had installed PCs in every location in 2003, and Washington thought the company could use them for some type of remote training. It was at this point that Washington contacted Learn.net, an Atlanta Online Learning company.

"The Learn.net system gave us the ability to provide computer-based training that the managers could do at their own pace," continued Washington. "Learn.net tailored the system training to fit the different job classifications."

Besides providing tailored courses, Learn.net's MAPLE (Multi-Adaptive Performance and Learning Environment) e-learning system includes Web-based scheduling of classroom and Web-conferencing sessions via the Web. The training platform includes Web-based class registration and space availability management for employees, as well as tracking, reporting, notification and automated administration for learning administrators.

Learn.net launched the Party City e-learning platform on May 1, 2004.

"Within the first week of availability, managers were logging in and completing courses on their own time-- even using vacation time to complete training," said Washington. "Our employees were really excited about it because the training is easy to navigate, from the advanced user to the computer novice."

The MAPLE platform from Learn.net provides time deadlines and email notifications to managers and learners as well as detailed progress reports with scores to support their efforts.

"Since the implementation of online training, we've seen a substantial decline in turnover, a decline in sexual harassment claims and improved communication between our employees," said Washington. "Best of all, we can give our employees comprehensive training without a loss of productivity that comes with training them at the corporate office."

"The benefits have been substantial."