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

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (6005)	6/14/1998 10:46:00 PM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Glen, you wrote< and AMZN a joke too.> Be careful that with Amzn going the wrong way it doesn't take your objectivity away. I never thought of Amzn as a joke! Quite the opposite. From were Bezos has taken it, I'm quite impressed. I guess where I'm at now is, my own personal concern to my opinion of wether he could ever turn his revenues into profits and if so, how long would it take? My opinion is still that he can't, unless he can add whatever it is, to his business plan to substantially increase his margins. The latest issue of Business Week is all positive on internet commerce, and Bezos once again, shows he's a great PR man, getting him and Amzn great press. Glen, you might be right going forward but how long forward? Actually, right know with the Street moving out of every investment that has any smell of Asia, into any stock that smells of Internet, makes me feel that he might be given much longer, than we'd like. From June 22 BW <Or it can mean using the Internet's unique ability to provide personalized service, the way 1-800-Flowers Inc. will send you an E-mail reminder of your wife's birthday, or Amazon.com Inc. will recommend a book you might like. ''The pattern of all the successful Internet companies is that they're doing things that can only be done online,'' says Jeffrey P. Bezos, chief executive of Amazon. Amazon has fine-tuned the art of online selling. It has done that by beating its real-world rivals at their own game. In the bookstore business, chains such as Borders Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc. have cleaned up by building superstores and stocking them with a huge selection, often at discount prices. Because it operates in cyberspace and doesn't actually stock much inventory, Amazon can go the superstores one better: It boasts 3 million titles, including those that the giants would probably never stock--say, a fly-fishing guide to Montana from an obscure publisher. The bookseller is now expanding the inventory it holds to cut delivery time to customers and reduce its shipping costs. Because it can monitor sales so easily, Amazon can avoid getting stuck with as many returns as conventional booksellers. And for phase two: Starting on June 11, Amazon plans to extend that approach to a new market--music CDs. By offering CDs, the company wants to make the most of cross-selling and upping the size of each individual sale. Amazon's revenues ballooned to $147.8 million last year from $15.8 million in 1996. Profits, however, are nonexistent, as the bookseller plows money into marketing and expanding its business. QUICK-CHANGE ARTISTS. Amazon illustrates another lesson of successful Web selling: Online merchants must continually reinvent themselves in this fast-changing medium. The best Web sites use the Net to solicit feedback from customers, then apply it to making the site easier to use or adding new features.>