What’s the Internet?
Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday.
I had planned on buying her an iPad Mini ($AAPL), but since Apple may announce a new model next month, I am deferring that gift until Mother’s Day in May.
She likes anti-aging skin products, so last month, I read articles on highly recommended products and then bought them from a few online retailers.
The one thing to keep in mind when I buy things for my parents is that at some point they will ask how much something had cost.
At that point, I either do not accept the premise of the question or straight-out lie.
Will the $120 Tripeptide-R Neck Repair work on my mom’s skin?
I’m no chemist, so I don’t know what tripeptide is, but it’s possible.
I hope every drop of the 1.7 fluid ounce is worth it, as the reviewers wrote.
In Jeff Bezos’s farewell message yesterday, he reminisced about his tenure:
This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, “What’s the internet?” Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while.
Today, we employ 1.3 million talented, dedicated people, serve hundreds of millions of customers and businesses, and are widely recognized as one of the most successful companies in the world.
How did that happen? Invention. Invention is the root of our success. We’ve done crazy things together, and then made them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more. If you get it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. And that yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive. Link
Customer reviews and 1-click shopping were revolutionary in the 1990s and, yes, eventually became boring to the point of standard and expected everywhere.
In those days, luxury retailers held prestige real estate locations and clientele.
These days, Amazon owns the historic Lord & Taylor building on 5th Avenue:
Despite a national shift towards working from home, Amazon announced a $1.4 billion plan to hire 3,500 employees across six major U.S. cities, a 10-percent expansion of its current corporate workforce of 35,000, according to the New York Times. This includes 2,000 employees in New York City, who will work from the e-commerce behemoth’s newly acquired location at the historic Lord & Taylor building on Fifth Avenue. WeWork bought the landmarked building in 2017 for $850 million, but after a troubling few years, they sold it to Amazon in March for a reported $1.15 billion. Link
eBay ($EBAY) was probably my first adventure with online shopping, but I can’t confirm that since my AOL account is deceased.
While Amazon is an exclusive member of the four-comma club, eBay has still performed admirably with a 7,246.84% stock return in the past 22+ years.
Maybe eBay’s biggest contribution to e-commerce, in the southern hemisphere, was its investment in MercadoLibre ($MELI), or MercadoLivre for Brazilian shoppers, which started in 2001 and ended as a stakeholder in 2016. Link
MercadoLibre, in only the past 13+ years in the public market, returned 6,463.23% to its earliest shareholders.
Both eBay and MercadoLibre pale in comparison to Amazon’s 191,375.72% return, but all are impressive.
So… what’s the internet… today? Or tomorrow?
Is it Affirm ($AFRM) helping people buy expensive products easily? Link
Is it Chewy ($CHWY) helping people find dog food for new puppies? Link
Is it Carvana ($CVNA) helping people displace legacy car dealerships? Link
Is it Etsy ($ETSY) helping people buy more directly from artisans? Link
Is it Pinduoduo ($PDD) helping people in China get fresh produce? Link
Maybe the answer’s all of the above.
Maybe it’s all of the above and way more.
I’ve bought Shopify ($SHOP) at four different price points in the previous decade.
And more importantly, I have never sold a share.
A lesson I had to learn and now practice more often.
Since its debut, Shopify is up 4,224.13% in almost 6 years.
I’m not up 4,224.13%, but a respectable 1,866.81%.
That number’s fine with me.
