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Santa Shopped Online This Year
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet is reporting on another blockbuster year for online shopping. Online shopping was up almost 30 percent over last year." From the article: " Clothing was the top seller in terms of dollar amount, at $5.3 billion total, up 42 percent from last year's revenue, the report said. Computer hardware and peripherals showed the most growth, 126 percent, at $4.8 billion. Consumer electronics was the second fastest growing category, garnering $4.8 billion, up 109 percent. People spent $3 billion on books online, up 66 percent, and $2.3 billion on products in the toys/video games category of hardware and software, a drop of 9 percent from last year, the study found. "
before the gov't demands all those juicy sales taxes? You know its coming, especially after the huge growth in online sales every year.
It seems odd that clothing would be the top seller online, given that it involves more to return/exchange items to an online store than a regular store if the clothes should happen to be the wrong size.
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That doesn't make any sort of buisness sense as you stated 2005 was your best year (and you also pointed out you did very well financially.)
Every dime which goes into that register should belong to me, dammit! Let other people pay the bills for state-supplied services! I want it all and I want it for nothing.
Just to be sure I understand, you had a great year and did well financially but are closing voluntarily while accusing sales tax inequities of killing your business, right? The business that you say is thriving and profitable, right?
So are you just pissed off that the state forces you to collect and forward taxes to them while on-line retailers without a physical presence in your state don't have to? Or are you just pissed off at the whole idea of sales taxes to the extent that you're willing to go out of business in protest?
Perhaps you've not noticed that legislatures everywhere are rushing to pass laws that force on-line retailers to collect the same taxes you do? Which would eliminate that apparent price advantage they have over you while they still keep the disadvantage of both shipping costs and the delayed gratification which annoys their customers.
Perhaps you could just do a "virtual on-line store(tm)" (patent pending) where your customers either at home or in your facility select what they want, place the order, pay for it by credit card, and then you personally run into the warehouse, gather up the items, and hand it to them. You get to eliminate those pesky employees (neatly saving all that money wasted on payroll - which you now get to pocket) while the customer gets "immediate gratification(tm)" (patent pending) without shipping charges. Should on-line retailers be forced to collect sales taxes, you can now actually undercut their prices should you choose. This is clearly a win-win situation no matter how it plays out.
Oh, and those items that you inflate the prices on to provide for future service? Quit selling them.
We don't have sales tax. Of course, the property tax is a killer, so you can then complain that online stores can be located in very inexpensive locations.
He has another comment here:3 75640
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=172698&cid=14
Basically, he has an exit strategy. Something a lot of people with businesses/investments don't have. An exit strategy is essential and following it is even more essential. Personally, I applaud him for such a move. He might lose some money on it (Costs of shutting down, lost profits), but chances are good that he's probably going to be correct more often than not on the signals he's getting. Sometimes it's just better to quit while you're ahead, especially in a case like this when he can see some clouds moving in.
Hey that looks really fair, a single parent on minimum wage
ends up 102 dollars better off, but (OH NO!) only after the
special (*cough* web-page only fudge factor) "prebate family
allowance" is added, in reality they'll be a lot worse off
It also looks really fair for a couple living on social
security, but (OH NO!) only after the (*cough web-page only
fudge factor) "prebate family allowance" is added, in
reality they'll be worse off
A family of 4 with one wage earner are much better off,
I'll agree. No issues here, except (OH NO!) only after the
(*cough* web-page only fudge factor) "prebate family allowance"
is added, in reality they'll be worse off
But hey, it's not all bad, those making 100,000 a year will
be 37% better off (no fudge factor needed here)
A lot of electrons are being thrown around about how sales tax is giving internet retailers an 'unfair advantage' compared to their brick and mortar counterparts. I ended up splitting my money roughly evenly between Amazon and their ilk, and their brick and mortar equivalents. Even with roughly equal prices, the internet stores allow the customer to avoid a major costly, time consuming, and stressful part of holiday shopping: the trip to the mall. If you figure the cost of car operation, and the time wasted driving, parking, walking past stores you won't patronize, and the aches and pains of shlepping all those packages around, sales tax barely registers. People are realizing that avoiding much of the hassle is valuable in itself.
On the other hand, when I finally broke down and went to the local Mega Mall and went into the Books a Million to get a few fill-in gifts, I was surprised by how much being able to scan a large number of titles in a very short time was helpful in selecting gifts for hard to buy for relatives. While Amazon has their suggestive selling algorithms to suggest related information, seeing a book out of the corner of my eye frequently had me saying K--- would like this or TR would like that. It just isn't possible to present that kind of information as completely online as it is in a brick and mortar environment.
Actually, a business is a subscriber base. The subscriber base is all those who would shop there. There is nothing else to a business. All the little things that are tacked onto a business are just to gain as many subscribers as possible. When you've built up a subscriber base, your business is worth a lot. The more subscribers, the more valuable. If you have a few subscribers, your business isn't worth much more than that assets, which may have already depreciated and aren't worth much. This person would have a subscriber base built up. Clearly, since he or she has returned a profit, there is a considerable subscriber base. Now he or she can sell it for some nice pocket change.