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

To: Randy Ellingson who wrote (105447)	6/25/2000 4:23:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Do you see anyone realistically challenging Amazon on the revenues front in the next five years? Do you happen to know which diversified e-tailer (leaving out eBay for now) has the next largest revenues next to Amazon.com? I suppose it could be buy.com. Or maybe not -- they show just $700M for ttm. I'm drawing a blank on others who may be within striking range. Randy, A pure play e-tailer is no where around that comes to mind that could surpass Amazon in revenues near term. Five years on the internet is a very long time so who knows what firm may exist then? Buy.com has really improved their business model in that they saw the selling at cost for advertising dollars did not work. I like to give them credit for making adjustment but they are not in a position to challenge Amazon in revenues. It is questionable if Amazon will be around in five years. I do not have a clue. I still believe the real winners in this space will be multi-channel retailers. My reference in e-tailer and brick and mortar too. The firm that will really do this correctly is still unkown to me. One hears a lot about Wal-mart but that is due strictly to their market dominance off-line. Wal-mart has not really had much success on-line. I do see the current succesful traditional retailers now agressively going after e-commerce. I believe many of them knew that there was not enough customers willing to buy on-line to warrant the resources and dollars necesarry to battle to pure play, equity market supported new e-tailers. I am not a believer in first mover advantage in retailing period. As I have stated, first mover might be an advantage for some technology where a standard is needed. I believe we will see Wal-mart make a much larger effort this fall on-line. I do not see Penneys doing much since they are behind the curve in fashion in their brick and mortar stores. We may also rule out Kmart. Candidly, I do not see anyone dominating the space near term. I do predict Amazon to have a rough time of it this holiday season as they did last holiday season. My reference to a rough time means the costs of promoting to continue to have decent revenues. Last year Amazon had to fight the pure plays firms which have now depleted their cash. Amazon used a lot of cash doing that but had raised more than the others. Not the traditional retailers will be marketing heavily for on-line business. Not one will be the leader but Amazon is going to have to continue with heavy marketing to keep their market share. This competitive environment never ends in retailing. If there is revenue to be had and it is possible at some point in time to monetize it into profits, there will always be a retailer fighting for a piece of the pie. I am going to throw a question back at you. How do you see Amazon creating a positive bottom line when they must always continue to market heavily to keep and grow revenue? Let's keep in mind there is no impulse walk in traffic. No drive by traffic seeing their sign on one of their brick and mortar stores. No easy way to sell slow moving merchandise using visual aids. I admit I do not have the answer. Glenn

To: Randy Ellingson who wrote (105447)	6/26/2000 4:39:00 PM
From: sea_biscuit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

It is amazing to see that there are still so many "believers" in this stock. Too bad that the subjects are more loyal than the king! Just check the insider selling over the last few months and you'd see that the bigwigs are dumping this stock so much that you feel like sending some Imodium A-D to them! <g> Five years from now, this one may not even exist. And IMO, the only way that this stock can avoid going all the way to ZERO is if it's bought out by somebody at a buck or two per share...