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

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (38984)	2/9/1999 9:08:00 AM
From: Sarmad Y. Hermiz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164687

Glenn, Greetings. I have enjoyed reading your posts (except the ones describing losses). Regarding AMZN costs, efficiency, etc.... How much further discounts can you get after $1 B annual sales ? I don't think there are are many discounts after you buy in lots of a thousand. Regarding warehousing and distribution, if they had unused capacity in their warehouse they would not need to increase warehouse space to keep up with sales. Also they added 400 people in 4th Q of 98. So their labor was not underutilized, either. Same for inventory. They added $29 Mil inventory in Q4 that was not there prev. There is just one more element of hype to dispel which is loyalty of customers. Yesterday a friend suggested I get a book "Trading for a living". At Amazon $42, at Buy.com $36, at Shopping.com $30. I really wanted to order from AMZN (to increase their losses and help my short position), but I went with lower price. -Sarmad

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (38984)	2/9/1999 10:36:00 AM
From: Alomex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164687

I doubt there is much more room for the publishers and shippers to reduce cost to Amazon. You might be right about publishers, but shipping costs still seem way too high for a centrally located large volume customer. About publishing do not forget thah JIT printing (on-demand printing) is coming, and that Amazon will be the ideal place for that to happen. That would lower inventories, reduce turn around times, and give Amazon the lowest prices as there is no return-stock risk charge for Amazon books (meaning, when you buy a book, you are paying for your copy and for a that unsold copy that will rot in a warehouse). Amazon will have to raise prices. In fact I agree. Amazon has a $1.5 billion war chest, so they will wait until Shopping.com and Buy.com go bankrupt and then they will raise their prices a notch (3-5% on the average).