In 1999, I moved to Seattle Washington from Washington D.C. to work for one of Paul Allen's "Wired World" ventures (Mercata, Inc.) - which intended to provide a service that would allow aggregated groups of customers (shopping online via the mercata.com store) - to collectively work together to drive the price of an item down - via a reverse-auction type process.
As I read this story tonight - about shoppers in China effectively doing the same thing - albeit without the benefit of an automated agent like Mercata's online store - I smiled at the similiar reaction the merchant in the story seemed to have...which was probably the same less-than-thrilling reaction Mercata's suppliers/distributors probably had as well about such approaches to new ways of increasing sales.
Mercata was quite an adventure - the thrill of the dot.com pace of change - and the tremendous talent of the assembled team.
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