• someguy3@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Sears had a massive mail order catalog. Easy to switch that to Internet, right? But they decided to focus on stores.

    • 4am@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      It’s quite unbelievable that it was literally right there. The logistics were like 60% solved for them already, the remaining 40% was just making sure the online content remained linked with inventory and fulfillment, and expanding that capacity.

      “We think online shopping will be just a fad” - the unimaginable hubris…

      • someguy3@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I was refreshing myself on wiki. They launched prodigy, but it was too early for online shopping to be popular. So they probably got a bad taste for that kind of thing. A concept in venture capital is that it’s all about timing.

        • 4am@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Ohh I forgot they did Prodigy. It was such a WEIRD experience; it seemed to drop you down into this BBS/DOS mode, and none of the navigation was very similar to everything else on any PC/Mac at the time. I enjoyed some of the games on it but I really didn’t know what to think otherwise. We didn’t keep it very long.

          • someguy3@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Can you fill us in on what it was exactly? I’m rather confused but I think I got online store out of it man