PETERBOROUGH, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 15: A close-up of a packaged Amazon Prime item in the Amazon Fulfilment centre on November 15, 2017 in Peterborough, England. A report in the US has suggested that over half of all online purchases this Christmas will be made with Amazon. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
With Black Friday, pre Back Friday and Cyber Monday in the books?, we all know about how e-commerce is swamping traditional brick-and-mortar retailing. To be fair, it’s not as if malls and stores have been empty — they haven’t been. But we know where the business is moving. So do we just buy Amazon and call it a day?
Look Up And Sneer
We have a long tradition in our society of taking pot shots at winners. The New York Yankees stink and have since the early 1900s. The New England Patriots stink and Bill Belichik is a creep. LeBron James is a loser and so is Kevin Durant. Only rotten movies win Oscars. Jeff Bezos is a rotten CEO and Amazon.com is overrated.
We’ve really heard the hate when it comes to Amazon. The stock is overpriced. The company’s fundamentals are lousy. Anybody can match Amazon’s prices. If Amazon has to charge sales taxes, it’ll all be over. Wal Mart will kill them. Bezos is mean to employees. Kindle will never catch on. Echo will never catch on. Its cloud services is all talk. Amazon’s mobile phone will fail: Well what do you know; the naysayers couldn’t he be all wrong all the time — unless they shorted Amazon stock expecting the phone fiasco to give the company its comeuppance.
The final chapter is far from written. I have no idea how the new Amazon bookstore chain will fare and when it comes to the ultimate results of the Whole Foods acquisition, those who know don’t exist and those who don’t know always seem to have a heck of a lot to say. But here’s something I think we can and do know. Betting against Jeff Bezos and Amazon has not been a winning strategy.
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