Amazon’s revolutionary retail strategy? Recycling old ideas

 

B64ADA6C-D53B-4D1F-9AF6-CC78C15D1E8E

I SOMETIMES THINK that if you could look in the safe behind Jeff Bezos’ desk, instead of the sports almanac from Back to the Future you’d find an Encyclopedia of Retail, written in maybe 1985. There would be Post-It notes on every page, and every one of those notes would have been turned into a team and maybe a product.

Amazon is so new, and so dramatic in its speed and scale and aggression, that we can easily forget how many of the things it’s doing are actually very old. And we can forget how many of the slightly dusty incumbent retailers we all grew up with were also once considered radical, daring, piratical new businesses that made people angry with their new ideas.

Continue reading… “Amazon’s revolutionary retail strategy? Recycling old ideas”

Online Movies From … Sears?

alphaline-blog480

Alphaline Entertainment is Sears bid into the online movie market.

When I think of Sears, or Kmart, a lot of products come to mind: discounted clothing, inexpensive tools, televisions, bicycles and apple pie. But one thing that doesn’t pop into my head is online movie rentals.

Sears hope that will all change soon with the start of a new online video rental service called Alphaline Entertainment that is powered by RoxioNow, an online video streaming service owned by Sonic Solutions…

Continue reading… “Online Movies From … Sears?”

The History of Paper For The Toilet

toilet-paper-over 34

Since the dawn of time, people have found nifty ways to clean up after the bathroom act. The most common solution was simply to grab what was at hand: coconuts, shells, snow, moss, hay, leaves, grass, corncobs, sheep’s wool—and, later, thanks to the printing press—newspapers, magazines, and pages of books. The ancient Greeks used clay and stone. The Romans, sponges and salt water. But the idea of a commercial product designed solely to wipe one’s bum? That started about 150 years ago, right here in the U.S.A. In less than a century, Uncle Sam’s marketing genius turned something disposable into something indispensable. 

How Toilet Paper Got on a Roll

The first products designed specifically to wipe one’s nethers were aloe-infused sheets of manila hemp dispensed from Kleenex-like boxes. They were invented in 1857 by a New York entrepreneur named Joseph Gayetty, who claimed his sheets prevented hemorrhoids. Gayetty was so proud of his therapeutic bathroom paper that he had his name printed on each sheet. But his success was limited…