To take the book industry as an example, Amazon took on every part of the supply chain, not just retail. The whole company began, not with an idea, but a data-driven decision. Let’s take inventory of its major moves over the last decade or so.
- One-click shopping
- Free shipping over $25
- Being first to market with a meaningful and usable, but predatory, offering for self-publishers
- Creating a used-book marketplace
- Fighting a supply-chain battle with on-demand printers
- Undercutting Lulu, the pioneering self-publishing operation catering to authors
- Booting up the Amazon Affiliate program
- Making it brain-dead simple to publish on the Kindle
- Creating a margin option structure fr Kindle publishers
- Once the traditional supply chain had been sufficiently weakened, ramping up direct relationships with authors
- Starting with an eBook experience
- Decisively promoting ebooks
- All the while, keeping the core shopping experience familiar