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

To: spal who wrote (96022)	3/10/2000 6:17:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Apart from some select names like AMZN who were early in the game, the best bets on e-commerce are now the players with established brand names and physical stores. For example, I think BNBN is probably a good play right now. It has taken a recent stock price hit, but has some very good fundamentals to back it. What are your thoughts on the subject? S Pal, I believe i have some first hand experience with on-line selling and a brick and mortar store. I found I could make my on-line store profitable in about two quarters due to the fact I can advertise for very little in my brick and mortar stores. One may also return or exchange an item without shipping. I opened my on-line store in mid October 1999. Traffic activity was miniscule such at a hit every day or two. Through some give giveaways via interation with our customers we increased traffic to an average of 100 hits daily 50 of which are typically unique. The on-line store will be profitable in Q1 2000 and I expect its profits to continue to increase rapidly. Word of mouth is amazing on the net and the proper involvement or at least involvement of ones customers is the trick. Making the site "stick" as is recommended really works. I bought some BNBN back at around 16. I did not cut my losses and have added to my position in the 9 1/2 area. I see a lot of upside here and many advantages of BNBN over AMZN the "one click" issue excluded<G> Asia has shown that virtual only stores do not work well there. That is also true but not quite as true in Europe. I believe we will see that trend in the US too and that will start in Q4 of 2000. Part of the problem in the US on-line market was the traditional retailers were not willing to throw away millions and almost a billion dollars in attempt to race to be the best known on the net. These long established retailers have learned that a slow and well thoughout build-out works well. They are learning and adapting from these lessons. Therefore, I see a lot of upside in many of the traditional retailers through a combination of virtual and brick and mortar stores. Note analysts are still increasing loss expectations for AMZN in spite of the upgrades. I tend to agree this is accurate and Amzon better start building or bying brick and mortar stores before they need to raise cash again. The equity markets were less willing to give Amazon as much cash this time then in the past.