Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1587 mails)

[zentara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (zentara)]

Howard Arons wrote:
> 
> 
> A small business with a real life store is doing OK just keeping above water
> covering his real expenses. He barely knows how to serve customers in his
> real life environment. How is he going to make more money at the margin
> in a market he knows nothing about, with a whole new set of costs to
> cover.
> 
> My $0.02 of course.

I really don't expect established storefront operators to
go on the web. Some will, but most will just try to hang on.
Most stores are already hanging on by a thread.

Young entrepreneurs will start alot of webstores soon. And
savy shoppers will find they can get better deals thru these guys,
and the floodgates will open. WebTV style integration with digital TV
will make it possible for you to run an advertisement on TV, have
a little box in the lower corner saying "BUY IT NOW". When you
click on it, your credit card info,address, and other info will be 
automatically sent. Two days later, it's at your doorstep.

I think that's where AOL will come in. They will start selling
"Online Commerce Kits" With webstores that take credit cards,
and is linked to UPS and FED Express shipping. All the business
man will have to do is supply photos of his product, prices, and
availability info. All this info will probably be easily entered
in some X-windows program. He will probably get "10 or 20" choices
of page styles for his store.

Have you looked at the little dedicated web-server that Corel
is selling on their website? It uses 15 watts, and does something
like 250 Mips, comes with Netscape FastTrack Server. It's
less than a thousand dollars.
Very soon, a businessman will be able to buy a "blackbox", that
basically is a webstore, ready to run. All you will have to do
is plug it in to high bandwidth line, then start boxing up
your orders as they come in. The UPS truck will pickup at your
garage or warehouse, and package tracking info will be sent
to customers. Of course AOL will set it up to use their
internet connections. A penny here and a penny there, pretty
soon you're rich.

AOL,Netscape,and Sun together would be able to come up with
a beautiful turnkey package. Of course, you would need a backup system
too,
so they get to sell 2 units. 

This is a very low-overhead way to startup a business. Storefronts
cost alot to rent,insure, and man-fulltime.
It is alot cheaper to setup a warehouse in an old barn
out in the country somewhere.

Of course the one drawback to this is local businesses will be sqaushed,
but WallMart is doing a good job of that anyways. That is where
the real problems come in---the social and political ramifications
of people not supporting their local stores. Loss of jobs, etc.
But Main Street died as the Malls came along, and I'm willing to bet
that the Malls will die as cheaper online stores come along. They 
will probably survive by letting teens hang out there, and selling 
junk food and cheap trinkets.
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