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

To: RetiredNow who wrote (954)	1/29/2000 9:40:00 AM
From: blankmind	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1330

- per a great article in Barron's earlier in Jan 2000, they compared companies such as C. Schwab that successfully re-engineered their .com lines in to the regular business - versus CompUSA, WalMart & others which are setting themselves up for potentially huge conflicts of interest & unworkable conditions between the traditional & e-commerce companies - the point you're making about allowing customers to order out-of-stock items is unexcusable - for any *.com firm. Period.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (954)	1/29/2000 3:09:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1330

Toys R Us let's customers order out of stock items, then the customer is suprised when they don't arrive when expected. Then since no email record of the transaction is forthcoming in a timely manner, the customer try's to cancel an order and finds that to be a nightmare. Etoys on the other hand is a hasslefree experience. Toys r us has no back office. Its just a website with no interface to the warehouse/distribution infrastructure. I knew thats what they were doing when they imploded with their Benchmark capital relationship last summer and then magically put up an online site for xmas. Offhand, you might think that toys r us or walmart has a huge advantage with their existing b&m warehouse infrastructure - but the reality is, tying a front office to an elaborate back office with multi-org and locations is so difficult, toys r us is actually worse off trying to work with the distribution system they have vs. building one from scratch. They are really in the exact same boat as etoys (or worse off) for the online component of their business. So I would say it all comes down to online retailing as an end to itself vs. a website that augments B&M infrastructure. If you think eventually most toys will be sold online then etoys is a better buy, despite toys r us elaborate build-out. Personally I buy all I can online. I think toys r us will erode gradually, unless they reinvent the web operation and break apart from the rest of the company entirely.