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Technology Stocks : eToys Inc. (ETYS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (779)	11/4/1999 1:34:00 PM
From: Richard Tai	Respond to of 1330

I agree with you regarding the lame revenue numbers. $13 million for eToys and $350 million for Amazon looks pathetic compared to their caps. I believe Amazon is still generating 70% of their revenues from books, so that's $245 million which means they only sold $105 million worth of music, videos, toys, electronics, auctions/zstores. Something's not right here. I just read where Replay TV is launching their new product on Amazon and the Amazon spokesman talked about the success they had selling $999 DVD players. I guess success is subjective. Toys r us is a joke. I just went shopping last night and walked into an Officemax, Sports Authority, Borders and Toys r us. These stores are hurting with the exception of Borders which looks like it's doing okay. I think it's basically impossible to get decent help these days at least on the east coast which makes large retail tough. I'm thinking small retail mom & pop stores could make a comeback and that online stores should do well in these areas. I think companies like Kozmo.com, the guys who will deliver you commodity products in under an hour, will hurt a lot of the online mail delivery stores. Why wait 3 days, why pay shipping when Kozmo.com will deliver your book, magazine, candy bar, cat food, movie, etc in under an hour? Jeff will probably try to buy these guys too.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (779)	11/5/1999 6:09:00 PM
From: David R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1330

I think that you under estimate the position of Toys R Us, and the long term threat they pose to eToys. Consider my Christmas shopping dilemma. Most of my nieces and nephews live on the east coast, I am in Ca. Generally, I would buy from Toys R Us, and ship, knowing that if they did not like the gift, they could drive to the local store and exchange. eToys could have been compelling for convenience sake for me, but to exchange an unwanted or defective gift would not be simple for the recipient child. Now, I can buy online from Toys R Us at comparable price as eToys, and my family can easily exchange the gifts at the local TRU store. It really is a no brainer. And, then consider from a 5 year old's perspective. Imagine being 5, would you want to go to the web, look at slow load low res bitmaps, order and wait n days for that toy, or would you prefer to have mom or dad drive you to the local toy store where you can get hands on experience with the toys, and instant gratification. When you consider that Etoys has double the market cap, and a very small fraction of the revenues of Toys R Us, it should not be difficult to see where this company is heading. A less than stellar holiday, and eToys will be OTC.