Interesting article on White LED's showing up at Wal-Mart.
The 40% WalMart Markup jumped out at me....I look forward to hearing some good comments.
(Taken from Fool Cree board which is quite active, thanks TekBoyeee for cross posting from time to time)
boards.fool.com
.....................................
GELcore Shedding New Light on HB-LED Applications
Byline: Jo Ann McDonald, Editor, CSN
August 7, 2000... GELcore's new high brightness (HB) white LEDs are quite the buzz, especially around my local regional WalMart SuperStore in rural Central Texas. After hearing the announcement (by Reuben Richards during EMCORE's August 4th Q-2 Earnings Conference Call) that the first GELcore white LEDs were not only real, but already packaged and shipped to WalMarts nationwide, knowing the who and why, I headed straight for my local SuperStore and imposed on the manager to verify the what, when and where. Sure enough, white LED-based night lights and flashlights were listed on the printouts to department heads as due on the shelves within weeks. The printout also noted that WalMart's getting an unusually high 40% markup on these new items, and I spent the rest of the morning answering a litany of interesting questions from WalMart employees and customers starting with "What's a white LED?" and ending with, "Can I invest in this GELcore?" Best I could do was point them to GELcore's parent companies, GE Lighting (NYSE: GE) and EMKR (Nasdaq: EMKR)... but the style and speed of GELcore's rollout of this well-bred "startup" certainly makes it a uniquely commercial entity and one worth closely tracking. |
