| nettime , David Mandl <[email protected]> on 18 Dec 2000 16:38:17 -0000 |
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According to an article in today's Wall Street Journal about eToys (who just disclosed a massive profit shortfall, and whose future is now in serious jeopardy): "[Founder and Chief Executive Officer Toby] Lenk blamed the lack of sales on a combination of the negative climate for e-commerce on Wall Street and in the media, a harsh general retail environment, and the distractions of the presidential election...." Wait a minute...the company's sales have plummeted because of "the negative climate for e-commerce on Wall Street"? Are they just looking for scapegoats, or have customers actually stopped buying toys from a store (albeit an online one) BECAUSE OF WALL ST. ANALYSTS' OUTLOOK ON THE E-COMMERCE SECTOR? I wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter. One particularly silly side-effect of the '90s bull market was that people looked at every retail company they had any business dealings with as a potential investment--especially online companies. I remember when I first heard about Cybermeals (are they still in business?), the Manhattan company that allowed you to order meals over the web, then picked the food up from the various fast-food joints around town and delivered it to you: When I went to their web site to find out more (like, which places can I order food from?), I saw about four restaurants listed and pages and pages of boasts about which schools the founders had gone to and how they'd put their brilliant business plan into operation. Shit, I don't care about that, I just want to order some lunch. People (I mean normal "consumers," not stock market wheeler-dealers) were insane enough to give business to a company just because their stock was hot. Now the flip side: "I'm not going to buy toys for my kids from THEM--they're the joke of Wall St.!" Oh brother. --Dave. -- Dave Mandl [email protected] [email protected] http://www.wfmu.org/~davem # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]