Likewise, the supply-chain techniques Sears used to achieve its miracle of abundance are not so unfamiliar today: a combination of goods in stock at its warehouses and a “virtual warehouse” network of suppliers who would ship the goods directly from their own factories. Sears even served as an agent for build-on-demand buggy makers.
(…)
[Their] time-scheduling system brought efficiency to mail order, enabling the Chicago plant to handle ten times as much business. In a short time, the system became known as the “seventh wonder” of the business world. Henry Ford is said to have visited the Chicago plant to study its efficient assembly-line technique.
(…)
Ironically, it was Ford’s own assembly lines that eventually forced Sears to take the next step in the march to plenty, the superstore. With affordable cars and the advent of better modern roads, Sears’s rural customers were no longer limited to shopping by catalog.
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I don’t remember Sears as the Amazon precursor. Thank you, books.
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
