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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: fedhead who wrote (79020)	9/29/1999 3:44:00 PM
From: John Chen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Anindo:which institution IN and which OUT. That's too much volumn from the small guys.

To: fedhead who wrote (79020)	9/29/1999 3:47:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Amazon.com Shares Surge After Retailer Opens Site To All Sellers SEP 29,1999 NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Shares of online retailer Amazon.com Inc. surged Wednesday after the company made its biggest move yet to transform itself from an online bookstore to an online megamall, saying it will allow merchants of all sizes to sell their goods through its popular Web site. Starting Thursday, more than 500,000 new items ranging from vacation packages to fruit preserves will be available on Amazon.com through its new zSHOPS program. Investors responded favorably to the news. In afternoon trading, Nasdaq-listed shares of Amazon (AMZN) were up $17.125, or 26%, at $83 in heavy trading. By late morning, 53.5 million shares had changed hands, far outstripping average daily turnover of about 10 million shares. Best known as an online bookstore, Seattle-based Amazon now manages an Internet shopping hub offering music, videos, auctions, toys and consumer electronics. More than 12 million shoppers have bought something on its site, up from 10.7 million just three months ago. The company's goal, said Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, is to make Amazon into a place "where customers can come to buy anything." The new zSHOPS service allows anyone - regardless of size, product or location - to quickly set up to sell products online. This lets Amazon add thousands of items to its site overnight, without huge start-up costs. Bezos didn't say how many merchants are participating. Bezos also wouldn't comment on how the new services will impact Amazon's bottom line, or on whether Amazon will meet Wall Street's expectations for the third quarter. Amazon will make money from zShops by charging merchants a $9.99 a month subscription rate and a "success fee" of between 2% and 5% of any sales they make. In addition, Amazon.com Payments service, which deposits payments into a merchant's bank account, will costs 60 cents per transaction plus 4.75% of any sale. Although Bezos said the new zSHOPS service will remain "completely separate" from Amazon's person-to-person online-auction service, it has the same goal. Going head to head with eBay Inc. (EBAY), Amazon launched its auction service in the spring to expand its products offerings well beyond books, music and videos. Amazon's zSHOPS service will compete with similar offerings from companies such as Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM). But Bezos said Amazon's expertise in shopping will help it differentiate its service. "We want to do the same thing for our sellers that we have done for ourselves," he said. At least one analyst agreed. "Amazon is not the only site out there to host small businesses on their site," Ken Cassar, an analyst at Internet research firm Jupiter Communications, told the Associated Press Wednesday. "What makes them different is that Amazon attracts more shoppers than any other site on the Web . . . and provides a major thoroughfare that many shoppers will come through." Bezos said that in order to offer a broad range of products through zSHOPS, Amazon.com needs to become partners with third-party merchants. A number of big-name online retailers such as Garden.com are taking part, although many of the participating merchants are small. But Amazon.com's lack of control over who participates in zSHOPS presents some risk for a company that has prided itself on providing excellent customer service. Bezos acknowledged that Amazon.com isn't screening participating merchants to see if they share its standards on customer service and other criteria. But he stressed that the company is standing behind purchases made through zSHOPS by guaranteeing purchases made with a money order or check for up to $250 and purchases made with the Amazon.com Payments service for up to $1,000. In addition to the zSHOPS launch, Amazon.com also will unveil a new Internet search engine this week. That means if shoppers can't find something, they can search other sites directly from Amazon.com. The search program also lets shoppers compare products and prices found on Amazon.com with those offered by other Internet merchants. Amazon.com receives no commission for referring shoppers to other online retailers. Copyright (c) 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.