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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Bid.com International (BIDS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: fuzman who wrote (497)	7/12/1998 10:12:00 AM
From: Bill Jackson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37507

Fuzman, Was it aggravated SH selling, or the underwritten shares? It might have been HS selling as they saw Amazon and Yahoo fly and they exited. ANy speculative buyer is like a grasshopper, they sit and then gone... I have an idea that the assorted state sales tax authorities are going to step in soon. Not with any new taxes but with the use tax already due when you buy from out of state/country. At this point the major impetus to buy box goods will get eroded. Right now the 7% on a $2000 box is $140 and the freight might be $35 so the local store is dead in the water. With equalization of the taxes the ILI item is now $35 extra. The retail store will of course pay far less freight as they will have shipped in bulk. On small items, like a hard drive for $200 the freight and tax are comparable and make that a wash, but once taxes are levied then that will swing things back towards the retail stores. In addition there will be a huge upsurge of 1000's of makers getting web sites and selling, using others financial back ends and eventually their own as VISA and MC finally come to grips with the net. I can see retail as the long run casualty and ILI and their ilk will need to have a coteris of hundreds of makers whose products they sell once this happens. Auctions have been around for years in the real world and some have bargains. Those that are in major cities and are well attended are priced above wholesale and near retail. I know those auctioneers and skip those auctions as I know I will waste time and get no deals. As ILI and others get attended well they will get that effect and after a while people going will reach a steady state with the same new people coming as old buyers going away. I wonder if ILI tracks those statistics now? They should as they are critical numbers. If they are just attracting huge numbers of newbies and they do not stay we weill see the rate of newbies minus departing reach a new steady state, at a higher level and the increase in sales will stop, and could easily erode if there is not enough money to blow on advertising to keep the newbie rate higher than the exit rate. As they say we live in intersting time, entry to this field is easy and low in cost and so it will get crowded and many will fail. Those that succeed will be manufacturers that sell to their client base directly with word of mouth advertising. They will have zero advertising costs and their only costs will be site space and internal manpower to serveice it. Those with a high warranty card rate and archive will be able to hit the ground running here. New ones must make sure they get the e-mail address every time. That is why the online registration is so valuable. It gets them at no postage or other ad costs. Bill