Hello Jim. Thanks for the post on ETYS. It does appear that the stock is oversold and is a very timely play.
Also appreciate your post on another thread regarding timely sector plays for this time of the year.
Message 14784919
General consensus on this thread has found natural gas and storage stocks as timely sectors. You're of course welcome to join in on the discussion.
We've also discussed defense stocks. The sector has been very strong all year and it looks like there's still some cheap plays. I can't seem to get this thread interested in DRS <GGG> or AH (slightly different sector) but there's a ton of good plays here.
Back to ETYS, their website was the featured site of the week at Barron's:
NOVEMBER 9, 2000
Etoys' Site Is Well Ahead of Its Stock Price
By Rivka Tadjer
It's not a great time in dot-com toyland.
With online retailers imploding left and right, few will have much to celebrate this holiday season. That's true of eToys as well: The leading toy e-tailer saw its shares plummet more than 20% in last Wednesday's trading, after Merrill Lynch downgraded the stock. It now changes hands just north of 2; its 52-week high was 70.50.
Ironically, this comes just as eToys appears to have gotten its act together going into the holidays. It's informative, easy, well-organized and well-priced. This site is so easy to navigate you'd be hard-pressed to go into another Toys R Us -- on or offline -- again, especially during the holidays. (When you compare eToys to Amazon.com, ToysRUs.com, or Smarterkids.com, for instance, you really see how intuitive and fast eToys is.)
The goal of my shopping trip was to buy a friend's newborn baby a toy. I went to the Home Page and right away chose to Shop By Age. A click on 0-12 months yielded ideas, price ranges and a search box into which I keyed "educational." (It's so much simpler to start out by telling the search engine that you have to buy something for a six-year-old, rather than guessing at brands and items you haven't heard of.)
The results were great. The choice that got me was Little Lessons Spider for $11.99. The cute picture showed a stuffed smiling spider with a hook on top so you hang it from a crib or car seat. On the spider's underbelly, there's a mirror. The toy also squeaks when you squeeze it.
The explanation said: "Even if babies don't recognize their reflection in a mirror, the changing images still make them giggle -- especially when the mirror is on the underbelly of such a colorful, squeezable spider." Sounds good.
What more do you want for $11.99?
Of course, if you want to spend a lot more, you certainly can. Click on "The Big Gift" (nice euphemism for "big ticket items") on the older age groups and you'll see items like Meade Instrument's ETX-60AT 60mm Refractor telescope for $299, the Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System (version 1.5) for $199 and DJ Mode's MIDI stereo keyboard for $109.99.
And I couldn't find any of those items out of stock. (Smarterkids.com was the only other site that had all the products I found at eToys. Prices were competitive, but eToys had a richer inventory. )
A couple of quibbles: Gift wrap was $4.95, which is a couple of bucks higher than the Web's $3.00 average. And though the toy shipped as promised in three to eight days, it was $3.95 for standard, which is on the high side.
Still, eToys' low price guarantee makes up for other costs. Its policy states: "If you find an identical item advertised for less and you contact us within 30 days of your eToys purchase, we will promptly refund 110% of the difference in price."
Fair enough. This site's an overall winner. We give it ****, our highest rating.
Rivka Tadjer is a New York-based writer who reviews e-commerce sites for Website of the Week.
eToys
www.etoys.com
Design and Ease of Use: 6
Depth of Selection and Availability: 6
Product Info: 6
Speed and Interactivity: 5
Price comparative and shipping cost: 4
Delivery Time: 5
Total 32
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