ANN ARBOR – Fry Inc., one of Michigan’s leading eCommerce solutions providers, has been acquired by Micros Systems Inc. for $31 million. Founder David Fry will remain as president of Fry, which was folded into the Micros-Retail group.

David Fry and other Fry shareholders are eligible for an additional $17 million if the company hits specified revenue and profit targets over the next two years. The deal includes assumption of $18.4 million in Fry debt. Although effective on Saturday, it wasn’t announced until Tuesday, when Fry said he briefed employees and clients.

The acquisition gives Columbia, Maryland-based Micros the ability to build Web sites to manage clients’ sales and reservations made online. Micros has in the past focused on processing sales for retailers, restaurants and hotels at their cash registers, but has built up its online offerings so far this year. Micros (NASDAQ: MCRS) handles online orders for about a fifth of its retailers but hopes to grow that and also expand to hotel reservations.

Fry, in a telephone interview Tuesday, said his company is doing well, but he was worried about how he would continue to grow it two or three years from now. He also said some of his current customers were pressing him on how Fry would help them grow internationally. Fry has offices in Ann Arbor, Chicago, San Francisco and New York, but no presence outside the United States. The company employs 250, most based in Michigan.

“No one is getting laid off,”� Fry said. “We’re not changing our staff. From the standpoint of employees and customers, you won’t see much change on a day-to-day basis.”�

And that’s the way Micros plans to leave it, said Louise Casamento, Micros marketing vice president.

“With our acquisitions, we tend to leave them alone and let them do their business,” she said in a telephone interview. “We don’t buy companies in trouble, but very healthy and viable companies and expand them internationally.”

Micros has a big international footprint. The publicly traded company with sales of close to $1 billion has 111 offices around the world. Casamento said sales are almost evenly divided between domestic and international. She said Micros is very prevalent in the hospitality industry.

“We are by far the largest supplier of IT solutions in restaurants and hotels,”� she said. “Several years ago we decided the next logical vertical for us was retail. We started this strategy with the Datavantage acquisition about four years ago. They provide in-store solutions.

“A couple years after that we bought CommercialWare, which supplies cross channel eCommerce,”� Casamento said. “You have store locations. You also have online sales, catalogue, and telephone – they supply software to connect all those different points of purchase.

“Fry ads another piece to this puzzle and not only give us the background tech to connect points of purchase, but also to build web sites that customers use for the online piece. For Micros the attractiveness of Fry is it is consistent in our mission to expand our retail vertically. Fry also has high-quality technology and a respected management team.”�

Micros has about 500 retail clients, and about 100 of them use Micros for their online sales. Company officials also plan to add online services with its hotel clients, after Labor Day.

Fry’s clients read like a who’s who of major eTailers. They include Brookstone, Eddie Bauer, Godiva, Lumber Liquidators, Spiegel and Whirlpool.

For more information, click on Fry.Com

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