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

To: C. K. Humphries who wrote (28460)	11/29/1998 3:07:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Glenn, It also occurs to me that on-line merchants have a shorter selling season than a local merchant because of the potential mail delays. I figure that orders would dry up entirely around the 15th of December. If you wanted to give someone a gift on Xmas day, when would be the latest you would order? You wouldn't pay the next day or 2nd day rate because then it would be as cheap to buy it down the street now. Assuming nobody starts buying Xmas gifts until Thanksgiving Friday, that gives the on-line merchants 3 weeks instead of 5 to sell their goods. C. K. There are going to be some very unhappy customers of all online stores this year. The novelty of e-commerce is moving quickly which is adding to the deliverly load to the residential market at a rapid rate. UPS, Fedex, Airborn Express, etc. have been reluctant to add capacity for these single deliveries since they do not know if this trend will continue. I cannot speak about the USPS since they almost never comment. In any case, this time of year our UPS and Fedex shipments come later to my business. Typically they arrive between 10AM and noon but starting late November and through December the deliveries often do not show until 5 PM. The deliveries already have moved back to 3 PM due lack of infrastructure to keep up. UPS assured me that if they become too backlogued in their deliveries, the business deliveries will go first and the residential later if even not at all if it cannot be done. Fedex has the same policy. Your point about a shorter season is well taken and it is possible that residential shipments as early as the 18th of December may not make Christmas delivery. amzn reported four times the # of sales as compared to last year...but what are the actual numbers. Kent I found this comment comical although the market may bid the stock up based on it. There was an anticipation of more e-commerce this year in categories that were already established. A 400% increase year over year is not that siginificant considering the valuations given these companys based on the projected growth rates. Last year at this time, Amazon only sold books. Now they have music, video and a lousy gift center. The point being that book sales may not be increasing at all. Theses extra orders could be in music, video and gifts. Also, as you stated the number of orders do not matter, it is the total amount of the sale. Amazon should have had at least an eight fold increase in the number of orders based on the added items. The added items all have lower margins than books except for possibly the gift store which is very small. Amazon also added stores in the UK and Germany. I added a store in Erie, PA. When I added the Erie store, my number of sales would have increased even if my existing store sales did not. All real chain stores gives sales numbers on stores open at leaset one year to make a fair comparison. Amazon is doing poorly from the small amount of information provided. They should have had a three fold increase just due to the added stores without existing store growth. Glenn