Why was there so much hype surrounding B2C e-commerce when it got its start in the late 1990s?
Mainly because the stock prices of some of the early pure plays went through the roof. In the late 90s, dotcoms like Amazon.com and eBay — which were quickly gaining in size and market capitalization — posed a threat to traditional brick and mortar businesses. In many ways, these dotcoms seemed to be rewriting the rules of business — they had the customers without the expenses of maintaining physical stores, little inventory, unlimited access to capital and little concern about actual earnings. The idea was to get big fast and worry about profits later. By late 1999, Amazon had a market capitalization of close to $25 billion, eclipsing some of the largest and most established companies in America. Retail giants such as Kmart and Wal-Mart — hoping to cash in on the dotcom frenzy — spun off separate companies to run their e-commerce operations. But many never made it to the initial public offering after the Nasdaq started to tumble in the spring of 2000. Almost as quickly as the dotcom p
