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Bill Gross started carsdirect.com with no cars. They made the site and offered the cars for sale. When people bought them, the team would run out with a credit
by MobileVet 3y ago
Bill Gross started carsdirect.com with no cars. They made the site and offered the cars for sale.
When people bought them, the team would run out with a credit card and buy a car for real and then sell it to the online user.
True story.
- ehnto 3y agoWhere I live onselling is illegal, but it is still a pretty common practice for small online retailers to just not stock some items and go buy them at retail when it's ordered. It makes a little bit of sense, since it lets you expand your catalogue without keeping stock on hand or negotiating a supplier. For a small ecomm store, that can mean the difference between looking like a legitimate retailer a customer can trust or not. This is different to the practice of buying up stock on sale and reselling on marketplaces.
- namibj 3y agoHow's all dropshipping illegal? Why'd you have to own the item to sale-and-delivery contract it to your customer? Note that if strict, this would ban made-to-order sales that aren't marked as such to the customer.
- MobileVet 3y agoBtw, that was 1998. Bill was ahead of his time.