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In fairness to the parent commenter, Amazon never had a net profitable year until 2004. Most new non-Silicon Valley retailers can't operate for ten years with y
by hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
In fairness to the parent commenter, Amazon never had a net profitable year until 2004. Most new non-Silicon Valley retailers can't operate for ten years with yearly losses. Certainly not most smaller retailers.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoThey certainly can. They choose not to. Amazon, at the time, chose to invest in their warehouse operations, they chose to lose a little money in the short term and build out their operations to go head to head with Walmart and the other retailers. And they chose to invest in developing their website and e-commerce when online shopping was not a sure thing. You bet big, you win big. Of course, now it is just a side show since retail is playing for pennies, but they certainly were not "dumping" back then just to kill the competition, and then planning to raise prices. They clearly innovated and brought online shopping to the fore.
- spaced-out 5y agoThat's because investors know those small retailers have no ability to scale. If Amazon did what most retailers do when they have a good quarter, throw their investors some dividends and only employ the people they need to keep things running, then investors would never have valued as high as they were/are.