Benedict Evans

There's a shop I always talk about.

I'm not sure if it's actually still there.

There's a shop in Tokyo that just sells one book in Ginza that just sells one book and they change what it is once a month.

It may have closed 10 years ago.

I've been talking about it for 20 years.

But the point is you don't go into the shop and have to work out what I booked by.

You have to know the shop exists.

Or you can be Amazon and you've got 500 million SKUs and they know they've got everything.

Actually, there's some stuff they don't have because they want to be individual.

They don't have LVMH.

But for the sake of argument, Amazon has everything, but you can't go to Amazon and say, what's a good book?

Or, you know, what's a good lamp?

They have all the lamps.

You can't just go to it and say, what lamp should I buy?

Right.

all of retailing and merchandising and advertising is about where are you on that spectrum and what else do you do?

Do you spend the money on rent or advertising or shipping or what?

And how does that work?

And the more there's a sort of a polarization between, well, if I know I want the thing, I can get it within 12 hours.

But how do I know I want the thing?