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

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (109163)	9/28/2000 2:15:05 PM
From: Alomex	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

amzn should survive in some fashion or form. however, net margins will ALWAYS be slim pickins and, at some point, the value of the company will reflect its limited earnings potential. I agree. This has always been my contention, although lately I find Glenn's pessimistic AMZN-will-go-bankrupt a lot less farfetched.

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (109163)	9/28/2000 3:04:17 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

danny, e-tail has a place in the economy. not many have disputed that. so does mail order. it doesn't make it worth billions and billions and billions of dollars. amzn should survive in some fashion or form. however, net margins will ALWAYS be slim pickins and, at some point, the value of the company will reflect its limited earnings potential. Skeeter, I believe e-tail does have a place int he economy but not as a pure play. That is not practical. The cost of fulfillment being totally supported by e-commerce only does not work. A firm needs a shares fulifillment center for both the bricka nd mortar and e-commerce sales. This, dual channel or three channel meaning catalogue too will work. There are some exceptions such as LL Bean but they actually have a vary large birck and mortar outlet in Main. The additional difference is they sell specialy items with decent gross margins. Books, music, vides, etc. will sell on-line but there can not be any profit as a pure e-commerce pay. The numbers do not work and I believe this will be proven to be true. You will see e-commerce available from almost every brick and mortar store large and small as an additional sales channel. You will se no pure e-commerce plays except for firms like Ebay where there is no fulifllment. Also, the cost when shipping is added, will be a bit higher than what it is in the brick and mortar counterpart. See Penneys catalogue, etc. My web site would be operating at a loss if we were e-commerce only. We are not so the people that work the brick and mortar stores also do our fulfillment and the building for holding inventory and fuflillment is the same as the brick and mortar location. I believe strongly that I have a handle on how this will play out. I do not claim to know it all but I have experiemented enough trying advertising just for the e-commerce site to see this is not practical. Advertising both at the same time, makes a lot of sense. Glenn