Amazon.com Reporting This Holiday Season Their "Best Ever" 314
In a refreshing break from all the doom and gloom, Amazon.com is calling this holiday season their best ever. Reporting a 44 percent rise in the number of items sold, they are refusing to provide actual dollar amounts, so it is still a very subjective measurement. "Amazon customers ordered more than 6.3 million items on Dec. 15, compared with roughly 5.4 million on its peak day last year, the company said. It shipped more than 5.6 million products on its best day, a 44 percent rise over 2007, when it shipped about 3.9 million on its busiest day. The company did not provide dollar figures and wouldn't say whether the average value of orders had changed, and the jumps it reported Friday are in line with increases Amazon has seen since it started releasing the figures in 2002."
Money is tight (Score:5, Interesting)
People are going to look for better deals, and when some item can be found for 20 to 50% less online, often with free shipping, of course they are going to turn to the big internet sites.
Amazon's real skill: hooking the media... (Score:5, Interesting)
See Slate's Amazon.con: How the online retail giant hoodwinks the press [slate.com] for details on why this story is idiotic:
Some, but not all, of these accounts went on to concede that Amazon would not provide revenue data for the entire shopping season, or even for its "peak day." Nor would Amazon confirm or deny that one or both of these revenue figures exceeded those for 2007. Without this information, we can't possibly know whether Amazon had a good year in comparison either to other retailers or to its own sales during the previous Christmas shopping season.
The same reasoning or lack thereof applies to the Kindle (which I don't like [wordpress.com] for its DRM and other problems), since Amazon won't release sales numbers for it.
So, did Amazon have their best ever holiday season? Maybe: but we're unlikely to know enough about the metrics used to make this claim to know.
Amazon's shipping rocks (Score:3, Interesting)
Another order that I did place from a manufacturer website [melissaanddoug.com] did come OK and on time, but it was a nail-biting experience. Although the website offered second-day delivery as an option (actually it was one of those outsourced shopping cart sites), the confirmation e-mail that came directly from the manufacturer said "5-7 business days". I replied to that e-mail asking what was up, but never got a response.
I worry about the day when Amazon gets too big and starts becoming evil (e.g. censorship), but for now, I am a happy and loyal Amazon customer.
They let me sell stuff too, AND the MP3s are great (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, the Amazon music store is fantastic, there's no way I'm going back to iTunes. Real MP3s, 256Kbps, and they sell long songs individually instead of making you download the whole album.
Re:Money is tight (Score:5, Interesting)
I think people look for deals whether the economy is good or bad. People generally want more than what they have regardless so better deals mean they can buy more stuff. Money gets tight you might see some impact on the wanna-be-rich items, like Cadillac Escalades and Coach handbags and crap like that, but staples still sell.
And to add on to the 'doom and gloom' comment in the editorial: I live kind of in the boonies. Over the holidays I went to see family in a mid sized city and I expected to see some evidence of the economic times being hard. It was Indianapolis, so a lot of auto industry jobs. But every junk chain restaurant we went to was packed to capacity and had hour plus waits. Every mall parking lot was full. People at Fry's were carrying out big screen TVs and new MacBooks. Plenty of SUVs rolling around.
I know housing is bad, and I know some residential contractors who are slow. And the auto industry is looking bad. But I don't get the newsmans's assertion that things are as bad as the Great Depression. My grandmother washed her paper towels and dried them on a clothesline in the Great Depression. I didn't see any paper towels on any clotheslines anywhere. Or any clotheslines at all for that matter. People seem to be getting along well enough. If Texas Roadhouse has a 45 minute wait for a lousy steak (and the closest restaurant [storyinn.com] to me is still 100% full every night) things must not be as bad as we are being led to believe.
Re:"Our smallest loss ever!" (Score:2, Interesting)
what? Walmart operates on a 3.4-3.6% net profit margin
are you saying walmart is not doing well?
http://www.hoovers.com/wal-mart/--ID__11600,period__A--/free-co-fin-income.xhtml [hoovers.com]
No (Score:5, Interesting)
10-15% is an average gross margin for non-boutique retail. After overhead, making any money is good, and 3% isn't terrible when your sales number begins with a b.
Back when there were smaller stores, the margin was typically 40%. But those days are over, and why I chuckle every time I hear someone complain about the service at a Best Buy or whatever. America traded in knowledgeable electronics dealers for cheap, plastic, slave-labor constructed garbage that are a tenth of the price and last about as long. That is, if you don't break the connectors that are glued to the pcb instead of screwed to plates, as they used to be. Now those same stores employing kids are charging three hundred dollars to fix the crappy electronics they sold them in the first place.
Ah well. There is no free lunch. But there are a lot of people who aren't smart with their money. What were we talking about again?
It is the way that they treat their staff (Score:3, Interesting)
With that sort of attitude I would recommend shopping elsewhere until they treat their staff properly.
Re:Money is tight (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, money being tight recently got me to open my eyes...and what I have found has been really enlightening.
Take the Brother label maker that I got for xmass. I realized that I needed one about the same time my mother was hitting me up for gift ideas. So I looked around, and found both that it was a great idea...and I better tell her where to buy it!
Why? Simple... I found the price ranged from about $45 to $95 depending solely on where you bought it from, and I wasn't even looking at shipping! Seriously... you could pay more than DOUBLE just for shopping at the wrong place!
More and more, I am finding this is true of nearly everything that I look at. I ma not even comparing used vs new....this is new merchandise, same model.
It makes me really see the value of Amazon where they have many sources of some items and you can see the prices... making vendors actually compete on price, item for item, rather than just compete on getting your foot in the door.
I decided a while ago... its better to be a good consumer than a good customer, as the two are OFTEN at odds. Hell just look at OTC drugs. You can buy name brand or generic... but even among generics, the price from generic to generic for the same drug and dose can vary by 80%!
And of course, I should mention, I am a born again amazon user. I just this past year decided to stop boycotting them over the 1-click lawsuit (yes, it really had been that long since I used amazon, I had been one of their earlier customers)
Not that I want to give them too much kudos, they are a corperation and I do believe will fleece me as fast as anyone else if I give them a chance, but they do at least seem to be able to deliver reasonable prices.
-Steve
Re:One of my favorite places... (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you tried to buy hdmi / dvi cable lately (and by lately I mean this was about 1.5yr ago)?
Local store price for 6' section: $35-45
Online vendor price for 6' section: Bout 7 bucks.
And now I pretty much buy everything online. It's so much better and comparing prices doesn't burn up my time or gas.
Re:But NPR told me.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I listen to NPR and Rush both. You're right, it's just a matter of understanding the bias -- the sad part is most people can't see the bias (because they agree with it).
And that's not even the worst of it. Would you believe I've actually gotten into arguments with people who vehemently believed that CNN was a right-wing mouthbox? CNN! I can't capitalize it any stronger or I would! I can't even understand what would have led them to think that, but I get the impression they never actually have watched CNN..
Re:it's in the sales tax (Score:3, Interesting)
I find it incomprehensible that in the US, your prices don't include sales tax already. OK the tax varying state to state is less odd - after all we have different VAT rates here in Europe. But it's far less hassle to have the VAT already included - no wonder people in the US don't like tax. I won't even start on the whole thing of having to "do your taxes - again, little wonder taxes are unpopular.
Transparency in this case is not beneficial. It is not as if you can't sit down here in Ireland and work out how much tax you pay, if you wish to. Indeed you are still free to work out all the tax schemes, benefits and loop-holes you can make use of, more is the pity (our state is woefully underfunded by a relatively wealthy population).
Anyway - I don't relish next time I have to go to the US and after a nice meal go into "school" mode and have wonderful impromptu calculation sessions afterward to derive the tax and the tip. At least your banknotes aren't quite so indistinguishable from one another now, although the coins are still stupidly awkward for making change.
In case you think I'm singling out the US for criticism - while on the subject of VAT I will say that the United Kingdom are stark raving mad for cutting their VAT to 15%. It will do nothing to get people spending, and leaves a giant hole in the goverment funds - that will have to be filled later with massive tax hikes when things are even worse. It's like a gambler having lost a large chunk of money, and making a similarly sized large bad bet in an act of desperation to try and win back what he has lost. We had it here in Ireland in the 1980s. Admittedly it was rather more insane - abolishing motor taxation for a brief spell, and we still have shambolic local services from underfunded local government since domestic rates were abolished. But sure enough we had to raise taxes again (that was overdone too in over-reaction of course, and we saw massive tax evasion).
To end the ramble - if you live in even a barely organised country, you need taxes. Being anti-taxation is just stupid - it's not even self-serving. It's not like it is better for people to spend crazy money privately on health and education rather than have properly run public services - those are far cheaper and easier to achieve, even just from the economies of scale. Is it better for people to spend money on car repair and depreciation from wear & tear, and pay the price of accidents, rather than collectively spend money on decent roads and public transport?
People get so selfish they end up not actually acting in their own interest. Pay your taxes and campaign for them to be used properly, and where necessary, for more people to pay them (not necessarily for people paying tax to pay more, or for people at the bottom to pay anything).
Re:But NPR told me.... (Score:3, Interesting)