America's retail giants are now becoming concerned. Stamp show organizers share their thoughts. E-Commerce sales on the Internet are keeping more and more customers at home while they shop at the "new breed" of website.

When Sam Walton started WalMart, he needed 12 years and 78 stores to reach $150 million in sales. Amazon.Com, just one of the Internet success stories, hit $150 million in sales in just three years with a website and a warehouse.

Worldwide Internet sales reached $10.4 billion in 1998, and are expected to climb to over $100 million by 2003...so says Forrest Research, the Internet marketing think tank.

The International Council of Shopping Centers estimates that if Internet merchants have $100 billion in sales by 2003, the nation could lose as much as 600 million square feet of retail store space---as retailers begin closing up shop. That's about the same space now occupied by 375 of the country's largest shopping malls!

Now comes news from several major collectibles hobbies, including stamp collecting. Not only is attendance now lagging at huge events such as Toy Shows, Book Fairs, and Coin shows, but  nearly all major philatelic shows are now experiencing downturns in attendance. MIDAPHIL, the Kansas City national show, conducted a survey among people who had attended their event in the past, but did not show up in 1998. Over 12% said, quite clearly, they were now staying home to buy their stamps on the Internet.

In a recent Internet-related conference of the top Wall Street brokerage firms, the chief subject was what conferees call "The EVERNet". John Doerr, chairman of the conference, related that, "The EVERNet is less than three years away. That's when Internet bandwidth becomes gigantic and millions of homes will access the "net" through their inexpensive cable TV modems, DSL or even cheap ISDN lines. When that happens, finding a website will be as fast as changing channels on a television set---and the Internet will, in effect, be "ON" around the clock."

The very nature of doing business---in the philatelic hobby and in the total retail world---as the 21st century emerges is changing rapidly. But maybe MORE SO in collectibles hobbies than virtually anywhere else. It is one of the key reasons why Dale Enterprises has launched a very colorful and elaborate website.

For instance, why would a collector travel many miles to a stamp show to search for a VF copy of the $1.00 Trans-Mississippi stamp (which he may not even locate) when he can easily find such an item here on the Dale Enterprises website...or others?

Book collectors are staying away from book fairs in droves. Why not...since they can go to Advanced Book Exchange or Bibliofind and search for the title they need from among the millions of books offered there by hundreds of book dealers.

Siumilar search and find devices exist for practically every conceivable collectibles hobby---from teddy bears to Civil War firearms.

Because familiar sites like Amazon.Com have set the standard for creating a "storefront" on the web that makes it quick and easy to shop, any commercial firm that intends to do business on the web must follow the examples set by marketers such as Amazon.Com.

Websites must be fun to visit---they must change and be fresh and new frequently, as often as once a month or more. They must, in effect, create an "experience" for the visitor that he/she won't forget. Thus, the visitor will want to return again and again. A static, "dead in the water" website is no more useful than yesterday's newspaper.

In addition, the "shopping" experience must be as close to the Amazon.Com model as possible. They're the people, by the way, who actually "invented" this sort of commerce in the first place. An Internet shopper wants to SEE the items/stamps being offered and be able to place an order very quickly. Press a button. Fill in a form. Press another button. No hassle.

The philatelic Internet shopper will also be attracted to do business with the dealer who is obviously willing to focus both his time and budget on his website presence to make it all it can and should be.

Will normal retail philatelic trade migrate completely to the Internet? Not completely, but it is not beyond even a childlike imagination to visualize the vast majority of philatelic sales being done via the web before we're halfway to 2010. Philately is, after all, a visual medium. So is the Internet. The two go together like good photography and LIFE magazine..

One thing is completely for certain: the Internet has already changed the methods by which the stamp collector pursues his/her hobby. To ignore this change is to risk being left behind while others are capturing the business to be done there.

And how is this business captured? By carefully watching the great Internet sites (whether they be retailers or resource sites like that of the Smithsonian) and emulating them. This not only includes building the site that is exciting to visit, but making sure that, through Internet promotion, it becomes widely known.