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

To: KeepItSimple who wrote (38480)	2/7/1999 9:59:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

In the real world, I guess I have to admit that Amazon will eventually make money if every other bookstore in the country stops selling books. Is this your bet? KIS, This is possible if the equity markets throw enough money at Bezos so that he can dump product below cost until competitors run out of equity. I know our Government frounds on the Japanese dumping steel below cost. Hmmm.. Glenn

To: KeepItSimple who wrote (38480)	2/7/1999 1:14:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

KIS, maybe I dont understand the point you and others here are continually trying to make. This time it was in regards to shipping. I admit Amzns shipping costs direct to the end user are higher on a per-piece basis than say, B&Ns shipping cost from its warehouses to a regional store on a per piece basis. On that we agree. My point however is that higher up in the chain there are significant cost advantages to amzn which will not be recovered by B&Ns savings on shipping only to stores. If Amzn orders 50 books and sells 41 of them - 30 to a book club in NYC and the rest to other individuals, they have 9 books that go on the sale rack for their entire worldwide effort on this book/edition. B&N has to buy the same 50 books, lets even say that B&N gets a 10% discount from the publisher just for arguments sake - they then stock five of their stores with 10 books each. The NYC store where the book club is depletes a regional store inventory and the other 20 books are a special order from the other stores. This is tremendously expensive since you have already incurred the logistics costs to move the goods from warehouse to regional outlets - a special order from one of these is much more than Amzns direct-to-customer model. In the end B&N spends more money on their approach every time. So who cares about individual shipping chgs if you are amzn - its not going to hurt you even if they were higher than now. Nonetheless, shipping is an expense and it should be managed, software to do this is new and the shippers are just now dealing with piece competition. Having said all this, there are other goods that I think better fit this model than books (heavy items, bulky stuff like consumer electronics etc) and Id like to see amzn move into some other area since other direct model booksellers can compete as you say. Michelle