this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 60 points 3 months ago (1 children)

We’ve certainly seen companies fall because they’ve not tried to stay on the cutting edge before

Best example I can think of is Kodak and digital cameras. They invented it then sat on it until it was too late because they didn't want to cut into their film scam.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sears. They got wrecked by the internet.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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…

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 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