The Chris Struttmann Report

I have been hesitant to say this over the last several years, for no good reason other than the fact that I’ve just never been a huge admirer of the company, but Amazon is the future. In 10 to 15 years, there will be no Wal-Mart, thank the Lord, but there will be Amazon.

Amazon is changing the Retail & E-tail at the same time. You just don’t realize it yet

There’s a fairly credible rumor circulating that Amazon is exploring opening up retail locations. This will be the end of retail as we know it. Super-Stores like Target and Wal-Mart rely on distribution networks and business relationships that took DECADES to develop in order to sell the volume of products that they sell at the margin that they sell it at. Amazon has it done already, but differently. With services for online retailers like Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), an online store can ship amazon as much inventory as they want, and when you get an order, you let Amazon know and they’ll ship it using their super-efficient distribution network all for a small fee.

The really killer thing about this is, when Amazon needs something for their new stores, they already have it in stock in their facility, they just don’t own it. Imagine you have your own private label product, we’ll call it Mr. Awesome’s Awesome Cereal, and you use FBA for fulfillment of all your orders. Amazon retail sees that your product does well online so they want to bring it in their store, well the product is already in the Amazon warehouse so all they have to do is buy it from you and they have instant delivery. Imagine doing a $50,000 wholesale order to Amazon in seconds, no packing or shipping, no dealing with that stupid machine that rotates the pallets while holding the big roll of shrink-wrap… none of it, they’ve already got it and now you’ve got their money in YOUR bank.

Amazon eats their prey

If you thought Wal-Mart was the king of predatory pricing, think again. Wal-Mart only buys things that EVERYONE NEEDS, Amazon has
EVERYTHING that EVERYONE WANTS, and it gets even more intense. Amazon already has a very popular service for e-retailers called “Amazon Marketplace” which allows online sellers to list their products on the Amazon website and then Amazon just takes a “small” cut.

Well, again, Amazon with their watchful eye can see which of your products do well and then go to your suppliers and with their MEGA-sized buying-power they’ll be able to negotiate a cost that’s way better than your cost and they’ll be able to sell it at a price that’s way better than your price. And just like that you’re no longer selling that product, you’re holding on to that product, which is the exact opposite of what any retailer is supposed to be doing. Terrible for the proverbial “little guy” that’s trying to compete in the online landscape, however awesome for Amazon. Amazon can systematically and automatically kill their competition; that’s predatory pricing like you have never seen before.

What’s my plan?

Buy stock. Over the next 10 years I plan to invest a heavy amount into my retirement, and without a doubt Amazon will be one of my core holdings. With everything that they are doing right now, they’re going to dominate the marketplace for years to come. I was too young to be in on the Wal-Mart growth, borderline too young to be in on Google, and I see the future of Amazon, and I like it.

By now it’s no secret that I absolutely love Las Vegas. One of my best friends and I went this summer (@LindsleyAdamE) and it was just so much fun.

I want to go back.

I want to live there.

But I don’t want to live there. Because then it will get old.

And in all honestly I don’t want to go back too much because then I’ll get tired of traveling.

But waking up in the morning in a huge king sized bed, stumbling into the elevator to go down-stairs to breakfast at The More Buffet at the Luxor and loading up your plate with a pile of scrambled eggs and drinking as much chocolate milk as you want…. And Then having a killer day doing nothing but having fun… how could you go wrong?

I’m so torn.

Vegas: I miss you.

p.s. For the record net/net I was up $37 for the trip, I can’t complain.

Rationale

A note to the readers: this is not a bitch-and-gripe article, this is a glimpse into Engineering at Florida Tech

Attending the College of Engineering at Florida Institute of Technology is absolutely one of the hardest things I’ve ever chosen to accomplish in my life. Up until my transfer to F.I.T. I had considered myself a pretty smart person, which I was, but after my experience here I have learned that knowledge is infinite and only bounded by synthetic limits created by your mind. I am learning engineering concepts here that most people would not even think to comprehend; and it’s not because they’re hard or difficult to understand, it’s because these concepts are so abstract yet so powerful that most people (including myself) have/had a hard time getting on that level. This is what separates the smart people in the world from everyone else.

A couple examples

My Algorithms and Data Structures class has opened my brain a lot. A lot of the concepts are concepts that I’ve already known about, however implementing them using unique constraints that make the problems “harder” make a true challenge. A lot of times when we’re young future computer scientists we may ask ourselves “why will I ever need to know how to do a bucket sort that breaks into a merge sort that breaks into a quick sort and then arranges everything into a priority heap when I can just call PHP’s asort() and save myself the pain.” I’m a mentor at Melbourne High School’s Team Voltage Robotics and my one student constantly tells me that it’s dumb to know how to implement something like sorting or string methods when languages like PHP provide them for you. Well, here’s my question, what’s going to happen when you encounter a problem whose dataset is so large that if you try to do it all in RAM, using something like asort() will cause your web-server to break. What do you think would happen if Facebook tried to sort all of the status updates in the world using asort()? Facebook would come to a screeching halt. This is the difference between below entry-level developers scouring craigslist for work and the people that invented the world’s greatest concepts like Google, Facebook, IBM Watson or the PC/Macintosh. The solution is CSE2010: Algorithms and Data Structures (also known as the Computer Science weed-out class), this class will challenge you and teach you to use ultra high-level computer science concepts to solve problems in the most efficient way possible.

Calculus II is another one of my examples. I’m currently in Calculus II at F.I.T. with the indisputably hardest professor in the entire school across all undergraduate departments, Dr. Shaw. I took Calculus I with Dr. Shaw and didn’t do very well and at that time I didn’t like the professor at all. When it came time to register for Cal II, I was not too happy to find that the only professor available was Dr. Shaw. However, as the semester has progressed I’ve gained a new appreciation for Dr. Shaw and Calculus. The reason why students don’t like Dr. Shaw is because he has a slightly different teaching method than the rest of the professors here: new material is covered in lectures, review is strictly covered out of class, which can be difficult for a small Calculus class. If you come to class and you make an honest effort to understand and follow along to what Dr. Shaw is saying, maybe even stop by his office hours to talk about a few points you missed on a quiz or something, you will find that he is legitimately one of the smartest people you will ever meet, and because he actually makes his test problems hard and challenging, you KNOW that when you pass his class (keeping in mind that there’s a fair probability that it won’t be on the first try), you will ABSOLUTELY be the best at Cal II and you will not be phased by ANY Cal II problems in the future.

I suppose that my final point for this write-up would be that I’ve (re-)discovered something: I absolutely gain the most amount of knowledge when I’m being challenged; and from that I would assert that the challenge for me has not always been getting a good grade so much as completely understanding all of the material and finding an outlet to apply the knowledge to. I guess I already knew that but am just now beginning to appreciate it. It is no coincidence that my least favorite class is not an engineering class, but a humanities class and is not mentioned in this article. I legitimately can’t think of anything good to say about it.

That’s all for now
Written in my 5-minute breaks in the Student Union Building, Olin Engineering Complex and Evans Library

Dear Mr. President, Congress-people on both sides, and esteemed readers,

As of about 30 minutes ago, for the first time ever, the United States’ credit rating has been downgraded by one of the largest rating agencies in the world economy. The purpose of this letter is to ask the question “how?” How did we let our spending get out of control?

I run a small business, I’m a full-time student, I work 40 hours a week, I’ve never cheated the government for a dime on my taxes and I’ve elected you people into office; this is my re-payment? What the f***?!

Why are we not balancing the budget?!?! Why are we still running the United States Post Office when I’m sure FedEx would buy them out and make them profitable! Why and how are we running projects like Amtrack at a deficit when the oil and commodity market creates a fertile market for rail systems? Why are we providing illegal immigrants with government services? Why why why? I could ask questions like this for hours on end. Because you wanted to put your career in front of your country? Pardon my language but how f***ing selfish can you get. Is it jobs? Say the U.S.P.S. were to be privatized, what would the difference be between a privatized job and a government job other than we wouldn’t pay for it? I normally say “the american taxpayer wouldn’t pay for it” but at this point, you people are spending so much money that the taxpayer is merely paying the interest for the debt that you’re taking out to finance these things. Do NOT even get me started on healthcare and social security!

I’m so pissed off right now that I can’t even think straight. I’ve literally never been so pissed off at a governmental system in my life. In all seriousness, I could move to Costa Rica tomorrow, manage systems that might be considered illegal here in the States, and make three to ten times more than what I do here in the states. However I don’t. Why not? Because the American living standard and the way of life. However if you, the government, don’t have any interest in preserving that standard then why am I still here? Why am I still paying in to social security and medicare? I’m honestly asking myself that question right now. God help me if we decide to print more money, that’s a totally different issue.

I repeat: what the f***?! Look at what you’ve gotten us into!

I just can not wrap my head around what you people have done.

This letter may come across as disrespectful but as of today I have lost a tremendous amount of respect for all politicians, democrat, republican, conservative, liberal, independent, non-party affiliation, all of them. We elect you in to office and pay you comfortable salaries to make this country great, and today you failed in such a huge way. You all suck today. You suck in a major manor. You want my respect back? Balance the budget please.

I have so much more to say but I can’t vocalize my thoughts without running my blood pressure into a dangerous zone so I’ll stop now.

Signed,
Chris Struttmann
American Tax Payer
Full-time full-ride student (without government assistance I may add)
Small business owner (who pays taxes there too)