Word: webbed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...same malls with the same stores for a generation now, sipping Orange Juliuses as we wade past the Limited on the way to the food court. If you were cool, if you "got it," you shopped online: it was convenient, it was competitively priced, it was fun. Web retailers like Amazon could even engage the intellect, making recommendations and offering a venue for shared literary criticism. When was the last time a salesclerk offered that kind of guidance? "People are more and more fed up with the kind of service they get in the big stores," says Connie Keithahn...
...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 in customer assets ($264 billion of which is managed online...
Initially, companies with powerful off-line brands had a difficult time overcoming the notion that they would be cannibalizing their core business if they sold through the Web. But as it became clear that e-commerce was a viable and complementary retail channel--albeit one that requires a new skill set--the big off-line players gradually came around to embracing...
...line toy retailers, that kind of problem solving was intimidating enough to keep them on the sidelines during the holiday season, caroling that the Web was just a passing phase. As late as last year, Robert Nakasone, then Toys "R" Us CEO, was more eager to talk about store redesign than Web strategy. Toys "R" Us has had problems with its stores...
...last Christmas, eToys proved you could sell Barbies and Brio trains on the Web, doing $20 million in sales and capturing more than 50% of the online toy biz. So this year off-line players had no choice but to go cyber and--surprise, surprise--they've been up to the task. Toys "R" Us, the bumbling, old-economy slow mover, has in the past two quarters come on like light sabers in the toy space, setting up a subsidiary, Toysrus.com and prepping that company to go public sometime next year...