Word: retailing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Bezos & Co. conceived an entirely new way of thinking about the ancient art of retailing, from creating a "flow experience" that keeps customers coming back to Amazon's website to read product reviews or one another's "wish lists," to automating as much as possible a complex process that starts when you hit the patent-protected "1-Click" buy technology and ends when your purchase is delivered to your door. The Coffeyville center, for instance, is part of a nationwide distribution network specially designed to handle e-commerce. Half a dozen warehouses like it have been strategically placed...
Think of every Baby Tap-A-Tune piano or Makeup Pretty Angelica picked by the yellow-capped pickers, packed by the blue-hatted packers and loaded by the gray-brimmed loaders at this 100,000-sq.-ft. eToys warehouse in Commerce, Calif., as another round fired in the retail-vs.-e-tail battle. Christmas is always war in the toy industry, and nowhere more so this year than online, where pure e-tailers like eToys are for the first time fighting on several fronts...
...parlance of the Web, Toys "R" Us and KB Toys are "clicks-and-mortar" businesses, combining their retail stores with online versions. Retail observers and investors are watching this holiday season closely for clues as to which type of operation is better positioned to serve customers and make a profit in the 21st century--the eToys model, which operates online only, or the Toys "R" Us version, with which old-fashioned chains are finally forging a Web presence...
Plenty of reasons suggest that e-tail will crush retail. Take selection. There are the infinite miles of infinite shelf space that Amazon's Jeff Bezos loves to cackle about. And there's no need to set up those costly stores, with rent and utility bills due every month and a sales force to handle those pesky customers...
...counterattack is well under way and gathering momentum. Traditional merchants have taken heart from, of all places, Charles Schwab, which has broken down the walls between its off-line brokerage business (with 335 retail locations) and Schwab.com its online business. Schwab had to be spry enough to devise cross-channel pricing for stock trades; allow account access via the Web, telephone and in person; and create advertising that speaks to the Web savvy as well as the Net illiterate. The result: over the past two years, Schwab has emerged as the best-positioned retail brokerage, with more than $628 billion...