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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.)
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.
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.