Word: davids
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Many antiques dealers, who would seem most threatened by eBay, have seen their livelihoods transformed. David James, for example, opened his shop in Alexandria, Va., eight years ago. He deals mostly in what the trade calls smalls: candlesticks, glassware and other such collectibles. He's still got the store, but today his business--and his life--revolve around a warehouse a few miles away, where he stores the treasures he has gleaned from scouting estate sales and flea markets. From a cramped, windowless cubicle, he monitors the hundreds of auctions he has posted--moving anywhere from...
...scalable. Add a few servers, a dozen more Web pages, a couple more customer-service reps, run your traffic up another digit, expand into new product lines and sell a hundred thousand more books or CDs or power tools. This kind of growth--Internet gurus like David Wetherell, enthralled by the mathematics of community, call it viral growth--defies conventional valuation and makes the usual measure of retailing--same-store sales, sales per square foot--seem like roman numerals or the abacus, relics of another...
...selection has improved recently, but it's still puny. The design is underwhelming; search and navigation tools are weak. And don't try returning something bought online to a store. "It's the biggest toy seller in the country, and its toy site is terrible," says Forrester Research analyst David Cooperstein...
...Reported by Sally B. Donnelly/Washington and David S. Jackson/San Francisco
Joshua Quittner, who wrote the profile of our 1999 Person of the Year, spent three weeks trailing Bezos. "He's manic without the depression," says Quittner, who writes our Personal Time technology column and edits TIME DIGITAL. Quittner and photographer David Burnett even stayed at Bezos' Seattle, Wash., home overnight, where they played way too much Foosball. (How good is Bezos? Let's just say that as a Foosball player, Bezos is a great Internet strategist...