Caliber Holdings, Inc. Participates In Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program

New York, NY – January 24, 2005 – The Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program (“ERSP”), the ele ctronic direct-response industry’s self-regulatory forum supervised by the National Advertising

Review Council (“NARC”), announced that direct response marketer Caliber Holdings, Inc. (“Caliber”) has provided a reasonable basis for general performance claims communicated for its Conquer HA product in a thirty-minute infomercial, and agreed to modify other product claims included in its advertisement. The truth and accuracy of the marketer’s claims came to the attention of ERSP through its on-going monitoring program.

In the inquiry, ERSP requested that the marketer provide substantiation for several core performance claims and consumer testimonials that were communicated in the 30-minute advertisement for Conquer HA. The representative claims at issue included: establishment claims (i.e., ““… In an evaluation of Conquer HA users, it was found to be effective 83% within the first two weeks.”; “The largest group in that evaluation were people suffering from knee problems. In that group 92% responded favorably within two weeks.”); product performance claims (i.e.,“Conquer’s active ingredient hyaluronic acid delivers up to 10,000 times its weight in water and other essential nutrients to your joints.”; “ …get the benefits of HA in a gel formula.”), and manufacturing claims (i.e., “… manufactured in an FDA inspected facility to industry’s highest standard for purity.”).

Based upon its review of Caliber’s evidence, ERSP concluded that the testing data and scientific literature provided a reasonable basis for claims about the general effectiveness of Conquer and, more specifically, the ability of its active ingredient – hyaluronic acid – to improve flexibility, joint discomfort and alleviate joint pain. Nevertheless, ERSP remained concerned that some of the marketer’s descriptions of the specific efficacy of Conquer were not accurately communicated and, accordingly, requested that the advertisement be modified to clarify this potential ambiguity.

In its acceptance of ERSP’s recommendations, the marketer stated that it  “Caliber supports the ERSP’s self- regulatory process and …in future advertising, it will carefully consider the ERSP’s analysis to assure that the manner in which it makes such claims is consistent with ERSP’s determinations.”