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

To: HG who wrote (46008)	3/16/1999 2:32:00 PM
From: Jan Crawley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Just sold EXDS calls @28 1/2 which I bought yesterday at 18 I am jealous. I bought a pair of Fendi S-shoes, it costs $375 and I would like to have Amzn to pay for them.

To: HG who wrote (46008)	3/17/1999 8:28:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Nettrends: The great Internet price war By Andrea Orr PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Back in the 1980s, East Coast consumer electronics chain Crazy Eddie built awareness for itself with TV commercials declaring Eddie's prices so low they were "INSAAAAAAAAAANE." The same insanity appears to be gripping the Internet, as a struggle for brand identity drives entrepreneurs to make ever more hysterical competitive offers. Online retailers today are selling everything from computers to books at prices so low that even Crazy Eddie might find them nutty. The champion of this new pricing structure is Buy.com (http://www.buy.com), which promises to sell a range of items from compact discs to televisions at the lowest price available, even if it means foregoing any profit on the sale. The company, which says it can make up for any losses by selling ads on its Web site, plans to expand into big-ticket items like cars, where even bigger savings are possible for consumers. Its strategy has been described as "selling a dollar for 85 cents." As crazy as it sounds, Buy.com is being taken seriously, and even inspiring copycat services. MBA students are studying them and wealthy investors are advancing them millions of dollars to secure a stake in what they seem to believe will be sustainable ventures. So widespread has this ultra-low pricing become that the "Zero Margin" Business Model was the topic of discussion at a recent gathering of 125 Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Asked whether they thought the new Internet economies meant "free is forever," 70 percent of those in attendance voted yes. To be clear, this raging debate has nothing to do with some of the best-known Internet retailing sites like Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com), the biggest retail success story on the Internet. Although Amazon has not yet made any money, it charges enough to make money on each book or CD it sells. Its large losses come from the fact it plows so much of its profit back into advertising, aiming at a bigger share of fast-growing Internet dollars. The Buy.com theory of retailing is different. There is little or no profit margin in Buy.com's products, only on the ad space it sells. By bringing eager consumers to its site, the company figures it will be able to entice advertisers. Of course, this is all theory. For the time being, Buy.com is operating largely with the help of Softbank Holdings, the Japanese investment group that late last year poured $40 million into the company. The investment drew notice not just for its size, but the source. Softbank has a track record for picking winning Internet ventures, and has backed several online powerhouses, including Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) and the broker E*Trade (http://www.etrade.com). Buy.com may have an especially effective public relations machine, but it is not alone with its aggressive pricing. Another online retailer, MegaDepot (http://www.megadepot.com), recently launched a Web site selling office products at cost, supplemented by services it will offer on a slim margin. MegaDepot is funded in part by the Menlo Park, Calif., venture capital firm Mohr Davidow, which says it got in on the deal only after some heated competition from other investors. "It was an unbelievably fierce deal to get into," recalled Mohr Davidow partner George Zachary. "There were people coming out of the woodwork." While investors like Zachary tend to trumpet their own projects, its fair to say that price-slashing ventures like his MegaDepot are getting attention because they seem so closely tuned to the realities of the Internet. In the past, companies like Netscape Communications Corp. (http://www.netscape.com) and others have carved out their space by giving things away cheaply, or even free. "The Internet puts extraordinary pressure on pricing," said Kate Delhagen, director of online retail strategies at Forrester Research. Along with ...