If all their alliance partners come after amzn, I doubt amazon can withstand the pressure to renegotiate the contracts and if that happens, I'm wondering if large corporate clients try to muscle ebay for concessions.
I just want to add that I feel Amazon has more leverage here than this thread is implying. First of all, toy has tried and failed on numerous occasions to bring up a logistics-enabled site, and the amount of money they threw into it means they know e-commerce is a key initiative going forward. This was a huge venture with benchmark capital in one case, and another false start later - 2 complete teams with nothing to show for it. Other brick and mortars are experiencing lackluster performace with their own creations - wmt, km etc. (although I think the km site is pretty good).
Another point, imo Amazon doesn't need "the worlds biggest toy store" to be the #1 online toyseller, since toys unlike books are more like show-me goods where promotional display matters... as long as they have the barbies and star wars "big ticket" stuff amzn can still maintain the e-commerce toys #1 spot depending on the competition... for example if walmart.com stocked 50% more individual toys than amazon right now I believe amazon would still win mkt share-wise, based on the amzn ecommerce experience.
So these things mean amazon might be able to partner with a lesser company than TOY and still win against TOY online. AND Toy might end up paying more in the longrun if they dump money into another losing e-commerce venture, they know this.
So amazon is down but not out!
OK - sorry for the cheerleading but we have gone full circle from brick and mortars thinking amazon was going to squash them totally to thinking they can just build their own amazon in like, a month - even thought they have tried it in the past and failed to a tune of 40mm$$!
PS Gap online is making their numbers while the rest of Gap is falling apart. So fundamentally ecommerce is sill delivering, people confuse the stock price malaise with fundamental performance, imo.
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