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Technology Stocks : America On-Line (AOL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (3229)	1/24/1999 1:43:00 PM
From: musea	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 41369

Chuzzlewit, an interesting counterpoint (in the sense of Bach) to your thoughts is in the following article, which you may already have read: Message 7448647 I am still digesting your thoughts on the nature of e-commerce. In conventional retailing, the discount giants are eating up the independent small retailers. However, those who are banding together in malls seem to do better. There is a clumsy analogy here to the strong portals and the e-commerce that's associated with these. An AOL can provide lots of eyes looking at even a small "downstream" company's offerings, and if that web site happens to provide an interesting and rewarding shopping experience, that small company could do well enough. This has been (and continues to be) a fascinating discussion. Thank you. -musea

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (3229)	1/25/1999 1:50:00 AM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Respond to of 41369

Chuzzlewit, Re: " e-commerce will exact major changes in marketing channels, and the retailers best positioned to take advantage of this will need to be as far upstream as possible." Correct. Also, by upstream you mean as close to AOL as possible?!. Here is what I see: Factories will have 3 strategically located warehouses in the USA. From there they will ship direct to customer for orders placed on AOL.AOL gets a cut. Savings come from eliminating middleman. Retailers will have a hard time to compete: It is easier to house ALL the retail merchandise in few Giant warehouses ( strategically located to ship out fast via FedEx ) than to sell items in glitzy but expensive stores. Yes, you may still have some stores for direst see and touch. But once items and reliability are established, then we go to AOL, ecommerce, TA