Thank goodness Jeff Bezos was born in 1964, instead of 1864. If born 100 years earlier, his genius most likely wouldn’t have been felt much beyond the city or town in which he was born.
Which requires a look back in time, specifically to New York City in the closing years of the 20th century. There was an odd excitement to coming home each night, this in a city most known for offering endless excitement at all hours outside the home.
The giddy anticipation was rooted in boxes that increasingly populated the storage rooms of apartment buildings. They were Amazon boxes with a logo that’s now as familiar as the Nike swoosh, the McDonald’s M, or the U.S. flag itself. Which requires a look further back in time.
In the 1970s and 1980s, it used to be that an order placed with a distant vendor was quite literally followed by a four to six week wait. Said another way, if you wanted anything in real time you had to go get it at a physical store.
Which was limiting in a very real sense, particularly for those outside big cities. Inventory is very expensive, which has long meant that even for those lucky enough to live in a big city, buying options were highly limited.
Thus the appeal of orders made over the phone, or by mail. At the cost of long waits, they expanded a frequently limited world. Though we didn’t know it was limited.
Only for Amazons to open our eyes, thus the excitement of returning home in the world’s most exciting city. Those boxes. Which requires one last look back in time.
84 Charing Cross Road was released in 1987. The film watches well to this day. In it obscure books are exchanged across continents by mail, with checks sent by mail, and yet again after relatively interminable shipments by mail. Along comes Amazon.
Suddenly a world of books, music and movies was greatly expanded to all. And this impossibly expanded inventory of “everything” was reaching us in two days.
Of course, the miracle Amazon was creating for consumers - and that foretold the arrival of almost literally everything in the coming years - was very expensive. Those around then, and particularly those who followed the stock markets, no doubt remember “Amazon.org,” and all the attendant ridicule heaped on an Amazon that was losing money quarterly owing to it delivering miracles one box at a time.
About Amazon’s former struggles with profitability, thank goodness once again for Jeff Bezos. He somewhat uniquely knew. If people could just be convinced to shop for books, CDs and DVDs online, and perhaps a bigger reach, transact with their credit cards online, maybe they would gradually go online for everything. And so they now do.
Bezos always acknowledged that Amazon couldn’t replace the community of shopping in physical stores, but Amazon keeps competing with the proverbial corner store. Which explains the excitement of an order placed last Wednesday morning, followed by a delivery of the same order on Wednesday afternoon.
Yes, a miracle, and one to keep in mind as backwards looking regulators at the FTC claim Amazon is an “illegal monopoly.” What a laugh, particularly as some reading this are already receiving their Amazon deliveries near instantaneously by drone.
Which is a reminder of what’s true about Amazon, though it’s an inconvenient truth for federal regulators. If Amazon is a “monopoly,” then it seems the only people who don’t know it are those toiling at Amazon, working feverishly to improve on ever more impressive delivery miracles..
