The trading world has gone nuts - !

[simongt]

Needed a new saddle for my audax bike, decided on the C.17. Checked the Brooks website; £95. Went to my trusty LBS, but they are having a fight with Brooks over the supply system and can't guarantee when / if they can get one in for me. So looked on Amazon; £70. Yup, a £25 difference between them and the 'mighty' Brooks own website. Amazon must be doing one heck of a discount deal with Brooks if they can beat them by £25.
Something ain't right in the trading world.

 

[Grant Fondo]

i think Amazon are being intentionally competitive at the mo, mind you they can afford to be!

 

[vickster]

Think Amazon are offering a fiver off a £25+ purchase (as long as Amazon not marketplace)

Amazon are often cheaper than the actual manufacturers site as they sell more (and probably negotiate bulk discounts).

Plenty of people won't give their money to Amazon of course on principle, even if they have to pay a bit more

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

I stand to be corrected on this, but I don't think Amazon has ever made a dollar in profit, nor paid a cent in dividend.
Their business model seems to be based on squeezing all the small players out and eventually becoming the go-to supplier for anything and everything. In the short term, they don't seem concerned about actually making a profit, so long as they can grab market share from someone else.

 

[vickster]

If they've never made a profit, how is Jeff Bezos worth $160bn ??
There must be something left after they've paid all their bills for that to be the case

 

[Deleted member 26715]

If they've never made a profit, how is Jeff Bezos worth $160bn ??
There must be something left after they've paid all their bills for that to be the case

Maye they have never made a profit because Jeff Bezos is worth $160bn (I don't know who he is but I presume the founder), or is he like some of these other people he's only worth that on paper if he sold?

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

A lot of tech founders are only "worth" some telephone number figure because they still hold a significant amount of the company stock and the price of each share is high, because investors either believe that long term the company may be very profitable or they subscribe to the "greater fool" principle of investing.
Many investors may not actually believe that a particular tech share is truly worth anything like the current valuation, but they take the view that if some other even bigger idiot comes along and is willing to buy it off them for more money, even though it makes no profit and generates no income stream, then they may be happy to take a punt. There's no rational explanation for the price of many tech stocks based on measures like P/E ratios, it's all propped up by sentiment about future growth.

 

[cyberknight]

because the likes of amazon are tax dodging for a start

 

[Twilkes]

Plenty of people won't give their money to Amazon of course on principle, even if they have to pay a bit more

I do try and avoid Amazon whenever I can, simply because, like Apple, they don't need my money - I realised some years ago that every birthday and Christmas present I had bought that year had come from Amazon, and usually I can find what I'm looking for at least the same price somewhere else. For more mainstream or everyday purchases it can be difficult to avoid Amazon though, and if you sign up for Prime it's game over due to the free delivery.

 

[Twilkes]

Interesting take on Amazon's low relatively low profits: https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/2...ofits-revenue-free-cash-flow-explained-charts

 

[rogerzilla]

Amazon has become an enormous messy tat bazaar now. I avoid it where possible, as half the search results are no-name Chinese rubbish from third party sellers.

 

[FrankCrank]

If they've never made a profit, how is Jeff Bezos worth $160bn ??
There must be something left after they've paid all their bills for that to be the case

He might do a bit of window cleaning on the side

 

[MntnMan62]

i think Amazon are being intentionally competitive at the mo, mind you they can afford to be!

Maybe so, but clearly they are getting them from Brooks for a lot less than 95 if they can sell them for 70. And if Brooks is fighting with the smaller LBS, then the problem sounds like it rests with Brooks. They control their products. If they want to keep their prices the same everywhere, then they need to build that into their sales contracts with every seller. When I went looking for a Specialized Phenom Expert saddle, every single retailer that I checked, whether online or retail, were pricing it at the same amount.

 

[screenman]

because the likes of amazon are tax dodging for a start

According to someone here they have not made a profit, you do not pay tax until that happens.

 

[screenman]

Maybe so, but clearly they are getting them from Brooks for a lot less than 95 if they can sell them for 70. And if Brooks is fighting with the smaller LBS, then the problem sounds like it rests with Brooks. They control their products. If they want to keep their prices the same everywhere, then they need to build that into their sales contracts with every seller. When I went looking for a Specialized Phenom Expert saddle, every single retailer that I checked, whether online or retail, were pricing it at the same amount.

Brooks, a great British company not helping the British, who would have thought that, plenty more of that to come.