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

To: KeepItSimple who wrote (45593)	3/13/1999 7:22:00 PM
From: Jenne	Respond to of 164684

"....it seems that if the stock were to crater, it would all unravel in a heartbeat." "The warm and gooey place Amazon.com occupies in the hearts and minds of so many of its customers is the great equity of the franchise, and that precious beachhead has been won by deeds and words. Some of that affection is just the natural and deserved spoils for getting there first. On that fateful morning in July 1995, when Bezos, still working out of a 250-square-foot office beside a Tile Barn, hit the enter key on his Sun Sparcstation computer and hung out his shingle in cyberspace, no other mainstream retailer had made the commitment to the Internet. "Barnes & Noble isn't doing this because they wanted to," Bezos points out. "They're doing it because of us. That's just a fact." "At the same time, Amazon's early inordinate responsiveness to customers gave them a heady sense of ownership in this bold new experiment. When an elderly woman E-mailed to say that she loved the service but had to wait for her nephew to come over and break through the packaging, Bezos had it redesigned in a way that was no less protective of the goods, but required much less violence to open. At other times, like when they hunted down used and out-of-print books, their enterprising efforts on behalf of their customers were closer to what one might hope for from the concierge of a five-star hotel than from the clerk of a bookstore. "We may be the most customer-obsessed company to ever occupy planet Earth," says Bezos, who at one point was the company's only customer-service rep. Of course all this proactive groveling is expensive and part of the reason Amazon.com has been spending more than it makes, but according to David Shaw, this was all part of the master plan. "Making money on books was almost irrelevant, compared with establishing Amazon.com as the most trusted brand in this new space." NYTimes

To: KeepItSimple who wrote (45593)	3/13/1999 8:22:00 PM
From: JOHN W.	Respond to of 164684

<<< >Amazon.com truly is a virtual company, existing only in the imagination No truer words have been spoken on this thread. But the question is, when will all the AMZN longs wake up from the dream, and how much is a dream worth when the bondholders come knocking? :) >>> Why don't they imagine some profits? That indeed would be a wild imagination. Lets see if they do earn that i penny per share in 2002, and the stock doesn't rise anymore, what is that a P/E of 13,000?? really wild imagination

To: KeepItSimple who wrote (45593)	3/13/1999 10:59:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Internet Week had an interview with Bezos . . . he was similarly elusive when asked about the scope of Amazon's business plans or when they might expect to make a profit. He said something like " . . . no, you can't define us as a shopping mall . . . we are much more than that . . . we are customer oriented and mean a new genre of service to the customer." (my words). The article mentioned that Amazon intends to offer it's own e-commerce hosting site, similar to what Yahoo! and Lycos have already been offering to independent merchants. No doubt it will be much better because Amazon will pay merchants to sell stuff on the site, thus continuing the leadership role in giving away $5 for every $4 in sales ;^). Bezo said something like "Profit is not what matters. We don't know what we will look like in ten years except big." As long as the myth continues to grow and there is no realistic way to quantify the future of the business except for projecting out sales and some fanciful concoction for margins and profits, Amazon will continue to benefit from a mystical valuation of the stock. The name of the game is "Keep it mystical, stupid."