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To: Gerald Walls who wrote (1282)	5/13/1999 2:42:00 AM
From: B. A. Marlow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2743

Good question, Gerald. There's no inherent reason why PCLN has to limit its demand-collection model to "generics." Believe it's starting with this approach to work the kinks out of the system, protect vendors' standard distribution methods from cannibalization, and operate with a large inventory. Also, in the case of airline tickets, people generally don't care on which airline they fly, especially at a designated price. Presumably, the model can be "tweaked" with the click of a mouse. PCLN's automobile business model is proof that the system supports very specific user configurations, including every trivial option. So, gasoline could work either way. If brand were deemed important, it could be brand-specific. My guess is that gas isn't highly brand-sensitive; within reason, you don't much care (alas, "full service" long gone). Grade is a must-specify, as you need to select the right one. Once you get into a long-term supply contract (say, 1,000 gallons?) for a commodity, a lot of interesting things occur. The cost of money becomes an issue, along with the future price of the commodity. At that point, the whole system starts to resemble a futures market. Still, it's pretty clear that many consumers and certain suppliers would be willing to operate that way (or already do), including oil companies, long distance phone companies, finance sources, paper vendors, food producers, construction materials suppliers, you name it--even colleges! Terms of payment, including financing, can easily be designed into a given demand-collection program. So PCLN's on the cusp of a massive opportunity to bring supply and demand into reasonable balance, especially in segments where inventory is commodity-price sensitive, inflation- or interest-rate sensitive, or "perishable." Anyone who fails to see this train coming risks getting run over. The game is PCLN's to lose. BAM

To: Gerald Walls who wrote (1282)	5/14/1999 8:06:00 AM
From: B. A. Marlow	Respond to of 2743

A couple of points, Gerald. Like brand specificity, the issue of "delivery date" is just another algorithm for PCLN. Back to gasoline for an illustration. You can envision a scenario where bidding is tendered at some price for any conceivable consumption interval. One guy bids for 1,000 gallons over 12 months, another for 747 gallons over 3 weeks, a third for 100,000 gallons over 319 days. An oil company card (or 500 of them) is issued on the spot and debited at the pump for each metered gallon within the agreed interval. The PCLN system should be sophisticated enough to aggregate price-specific demand ("demand-collection") for any volume of gasoline over any delivery interval and feed it to interested suppliers, who decide by computer which bids to accept. Here, PCLN earns a commission on accepted bids. In an alternate approach, one or more refiners would offer say, a rolling allocation of gasoline to PCLN at a fixed daily price. In this variation, PCLN's cost for gasoline would be known daily for any date in the future up to say, a year, and it could accept all profitable bids up to the allocated volume. Powerful, efficient, no inventory, massive volume, no fulfillment headaches and no controversial sellers. One thing's for sure. PCLN's system is highly elastic and, within reason, malleable, extensible and scalable. As to the patents, they're creating a lot of buzz but don't be misled: PCLN's success in no way depends on them. They may hold up, they may not. What matters is how quickly PCLN rolls it all out and how much "traction" it achieves. PCLN/Walker Digital has filed something like 22 patents for PCLN functions, with 2 already granted. As "business process" patents are unprecedented, books will be written about them. Move over, Thomas Edison. BAM