What benefit does a Negative Operating Cycle get you? Other than just cash on hand. Amazon has a lot of cash because they practice Just In Time inventory management & sell out of their products before the bill for that product comes due. Other companies pay the bill first & then wait for the stock to sell out to recoup their money. Aside from the benefit of having cash on hand, what benefit do you get from this? [more inside]
posted by MesoFilter on Feb 17, 2012 - 19 answers

I was watching a TV show about UPS' Worldport facility, and there are a lot of shots of Amazon boxes! So I got curious: what percentage of UPS' business (by revenue, number of items, weight, whatever) comes from Amazon? [more inside]
posted by roast beef on Dec 19, 2011 - 5 answers

How to be successful as a professional Amazon merchant and how to limit one's risk? [more inside]
posted by mintchip on Jun 16, 2010 - 5 answers

I'm trying to figure out how to create a XML / RSS feed of my Amazon web store products so I can update to Google Merchant. There doesn't seem to be many functions / plug-ins offered by AWS and their help isn't very helpful. I've done a fair amount of searching and have come up empty handed. Would anyone have an idea how I might go about creating this feed?
posted by Aegean on Oct 30, 2009 - 0 answers

I have a game that I am interesting in self-publishing. I don't have a lot of capital to put into it myself, so I'm thinking about using pre-orders to generate the bulk of the necessary revenue. What is the etiquette, if you will, of pre-ordering? What's "too long" between the submission of a pre-order and the availability of the product? I don't want people to actually give me money unless I can guarantee eventual shipment of the product; how is this handled? I'm thinking of how Amazon doesn't charge your card until an item ships; is that how pre-orders are typically handled? Do business that operate on pre-orders borrow against those pre-orders to pay for manufacturing, and then cash in on those pre-orders to pay back the bank? Any wisdom in this area is appreciated.
posted by blueshammer on Apr 20, 2004 - 13 answers