A review by crabbygirl
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
4.0
either this author is GREAT, or that adage 'live long enough and you'll change your mind about everything' is true because i LIKE business now!
i found this a fascinating read. there was nostalgia in remembering my own first forays into the internet and Netscape and eBay. there was juicy gossip: bezos' screaming tantrums, his weird space race fixation, cloak and dagger meetings as they poached Walmart's and Microsoft's best people.
there were brilliant business strategies: offering free shipping as the base level of service with a higher tier for those wanting to pay for faster delivery. (then gambling on their 'prime' membership of a paltry $79/year for free 2 day shipping of anything - customers bought twice as much as before, AND started buying from new categories). amazon used their 'marketplace' platform to allow 3rd party selling but really it was a way to closely watch HOW to be successful in whatever business someone came up with - passive, no-risk learning - and then they beat them at their own game.
there were Shakespearian maneuvers: they emptied toysRus' online store of the hottest toys that xmas in order to meet their own customer demands and screw the competition. they offered free 2 days shipping and unlimited returns in their new online shoes store in order to force the (more visible competitor) Zappos to take a similar hit - except most of the traffic went to Zappos and they lost tons more money than amazon. (at least enough money that they couldn't resist amazon's takeover) same tactics with other businesses like Quidsi. the threats - dropping a product's 'buy' buttons when they didn't get their way; orchestrating competitor products to show up when doing a product search from a non-compliant vendors. nasty, nasty stuff. and i haven't even started about their dirty tricks with respect to ebooks and their continuing stranglehold on the publishing industry.
i found this a fascinating read. there was nostalgia in remembering my own first forays into the internet and Netscape and eBay. there was juicy gossip: bezos' screaming tantrums, his weird space race fixation, cloak and dagger meetings as they poached Walmart's and Microsoft's best people.
there were brilliant business strategies: offering free shipping as the base level of service with a higher tier for those wanting to pay for faster delivery. (then gambling on their 'prime' membership of a paltry $79/year for free 2 day shipping of anything - customers bought twice as much as before, AND started buying from new categories). amazon used their 'marketplace' platform to allow 3rd party selling but really it was a way to closely watch HOW to be successful in whatever business someone came up with - passive, no-risk learning - and then they beat them at their own game.
there were Shakespearian maneuvers: they emptied toysRus' online store of the hottest toys that xmas in order to meet their own customer demands and screw the competition. they offered free 2 days shipping and unlimited returns in their new online shoes store in order to force the (more visible competitor) Zappos to take a similar hit - except most of the traffic went to Zappos and they lost tons more money than amazon. (at least enough money that they couldn't resist amazon's takeover) same tactics with other businesses like Quidsi. the threats - dropping a product's 'buy' buttons when they didn't get their way; orchestrating competitor products to show up when doing a product search from a non-compliant vendors. nasty, nasty stuff. and i haven't even started about their dirty tricks with respect to ebooks and their continuing stranglehold on the publishing industry.