Glenn - Fascinating story! Stepping back, we have to remember that CSCO and Dell, two wildly successful companies, sell more than 60% of their products online. SCH has shown how to be profitable w/ a high volume, low transaction charge web business. As an Oracle consultant, I can tell you that every kind of business imaginable is trying to shift all their information distribution to the web, because of the ease of communications; the client server model is unmaintainable.
So, powerful forces drive us to the web. But, can anyone figure out how to sell retail, profitably over the web? We're still in the early stages, and it perhaps remains an open question. eBay has a retail business that simply cannot be duplicated, in breadth and scope, outside the web. AMZN has far more experience than anyone else in the more traditional retail business, and seems to be the most reliable. One must admit that they haven't yet demonstrated that they can make money at this. But, they HAVE proved that masses of people WILL purchase retail products on the web; and that was in doubt two years ago.
There is a huge gap in the amount of expertise available and the number of projects companies want to develop for the web; an enormous gap. I think that is Levi's problem: they can't get enough experienced help to make this stuff work. Many others are in the same boat.
That doesn't mean it can't be done.
Rgeards,
Tom |
