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

To: John Donahoe who wrote (79040)	9/29/1999 9:19:00 PM
From: Jenne	Respond to of 164684

AMAZON TO BEGIN ALLOWING ANYONE TO SELL MERCHANDISE THROUGH ITS WEB SITE VIA ZSHOPS PROGRAM. By Michael Makowsky Contributing Editor The Bull Market Report Amazon introduced a new service, zSHOPS, which lets almost anyone - regardless of size, product or location - sell online. Merchants paying $9.99 a month can list as many as 3,000 items. Shoppers can link to zSHOPS from Amazon.com's home page. They can search for a specific item, such as a digital camera, or an entire product category, like clothing, books or toys. If shoppers like a particular zSHOPS merchant, they can click on the merchant's name to find a list of all the products that the seller is offering. This is, maybe, the single most important news item ever released by this company. That, by default, makes this one of the biggest announcements in the history of e-commerce. People are finally starting to realize that "Amazon has very little to do with books." In fact, it never really did. Amazon is about selling to people over the Internet. It is e-commerce at its absolute purest. Amazon always wanted to be where people go to buy ANYTHING. However, as time passed and experience accrued, Jeff Bezos and the rest of Amazon began to realize something. They couldn't sell everything. To sell everything, you would have to HAVE everything. And having everything meant a physical presence that they simply didn't want. So one day, someone had the notion that if a customer wanted something that Amazon didn't have, then Amazon would take the customer to someone who did. Wow. This very simple notion may be a true quantum leap for Amazon and e-commerce. Amazon, through its own capabilities and the capabilities of its (potential) millions of partners, may actually be able to achieve Bezos' true goal: To be able to fill any and every customer's consumer's desire. This means that in five years, maybe you don't go "shopping." You go "Amazoning." And from a less cultural, more investor oriented point of view, this is PURE money for Amazon. There is no inventory, no delivery, no fulfillment. There is virtually no cost. They are a conduit through which commerce flows. Customers will go to Amazon because they KNOW they will find what they are looking for. And shops will sign up with Amazon because they KNOW Amazon will bring them customers. As investors, this is important because Amazon's skeptics have repeatedly asked: "But how are they going to make money?" They have always answered that if you have 12 million customers that love you, there are going to be ways to make money. This is the first move that truly capitalizes on their well-earned, very powerful customer base. This is the first move, and only the first. There will be more to come. If you don't believe me, just take a long look at Jeff Bezos' face. That smile just SCREAMS billions of dollars.