I have bought many gadgets and economical computer supplies from geeks.com over the years, but in today’s email I received this:
Anyone know what has happened to this company? They seemed to be honest, aggressive in marketing, but not fraudulent. I will miss them. What gives?
Amazon.
Similar, but not quite the same. Or are you saying that Amazon is the cause of Geeks.com’s demise?
And if so, why geeks.com and no others? I have a dozen companies I do regular business with who are still going strong. Will Amazon kill them all, or will they join?
Amazon - because of this in their post: “There are many why’s… The e-commerce landscape, as well as the consumer electronics market, has changed dramatically with intense competition and a 1000lb gorilla (do we really need to say who) competitor that can lose millions of dollars to buy customers and suck up inventory. They can lose money with impunity, supported by the stock market. We cannot.”
There is only one 1000lb gorilla.
As for other companies going strong - I don’t know. I buy a lot of stuff online. Usually I first check Amazon, since they have a huge selection, then see if I can get better price for a particular something somewhere else. If the price difference is minor, I still go with Amazon, since I have had good experience with the shipping and returns there. And usually there is no price difference or Amazon beats them all.
They’re probably referring to newegg.
This reminds me a little of the “clone fairs” (my name) that were held ca. 1975-2000 in the Los Angeles area, and I think are no more. These were weekend affairs, typically held in large indoor arenas, where many small booths were rented to small vendors. There was at least one each weekend somewhere in the Greater Los Angeles area, and they rotated back to the same location about once a month. I used to go to them when they were close, and bought thousands of dollars of computer parts each time.
Vendors were typically Mom & Pop stores during the week although some were vendors that bought wholesale and sold only on weekends. Products were often “knockoffs”, that is, comparable to name-brands, but much cheaper. Many items such as connectors that cost $8 at Radio Shack were available for 50 cents, and just as good. Some items were name-brands, but a little less than front-running technology, like 3 months (!) after a product introduction, and selling at a discount.
Sometimes the dealers were garage-sale types, but most were reputable, IMHO.
One of the advantages to the clone fairs was if you hesitated to buy an item, you could be pretty sure it would be there next month, and cheaper. Maybe better as well. And if you waited to buy late in the day, the prices declined, as the vendors didn’t want to pack 'em up and head 'em back to the shop. As a customer, I sometimes played one vendor against another.
My guess is the Internet clobbered the clone fairs. Maybe something like this happened to geeks.com.
Newegg was my immediate thought since that’s usually my first stop for computer components but I think they probably meant Amazon. I don’t know if Newegg is publicly traded on the stock market.
According to Wiki, Newegg filed for an IPO in 2009 and withdrew the application in 2011 so they must mean Amazon.