The Perfect Store: Inside eBay (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Pierre Omidyar was born in Paris in 1967 to a French-Iranian family that placed a premium on intellectual pursuits..." (more)
Key Phrases: online auction space, free listing day, iron collectors, Silicon Valley, New York, Bidder's Edge (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the short but wild history of the Internet, few companies have developed such an ideal approach to utilizing the uniqueness of the medium for business as eBay--hence the title of Adam Cohen's colorful and insightful corporate biography The Perfect Store. Cohen, chief technology writer for Time magazine before joining The New York Times' editorial board, is the only journalist to receive complete cooperation from the company for such a project, and the combination of access and experience leads to a well-researched and well-written tale capturing the essence of this online auction-house phenomenon. In the process, Cohen reveals how the pioneering site first developed into a vibrant virtual community, then a cultural icon and a model for Web-based commerce that reported revenue of $749 million in 2001.

From its beginnings as a hobby site on a Silicon Valley PC, to its maturation as a real company under the burgeoning fiscal pressures of cyberspace, to its present status as one of the few original e-business practitioners to survive the dot.com implosion, eBay has always been part of the crowd while managing to stand out from it. Cohen helps us understand why by taking us inside the heads of major players like Pierre Omidyar, the cofounder who imbued his site with a Libertarian philosophy responsible for its heart and soul, and Meg Whitman, the seasoned manager who brought business savvy and a Harvard MBA to its roller-coaster world. What helps make the book so readable and informative, though, are Cohen's accompanying observations of the many other people and events that also helped eBay develop its trademark direction and characteristic personality: the company that formulated its distinctive logo, the Kansas City clothing-iron collectors whose pastime was transformed by the upstart Web site, the quirky listings that generated controversy (and publicity) like the one in 1999 for a "fully functional kidney," even detractors who decry its big-business underpinnings. Fans of the site, along with students of the online world in general, will find Cohen's account both instructive and enjoyable. --Howard Rothman

From Publishers Weekly

This book's huge cast of supporting characters is considerably more interesting than its nominal stars, eBay's founders and senior management. To some extent that's unavoidable. How can anyone be more colorful than the Elvis aficionados and bubble-wrap entrepreneurs that inhabit eBay's virtual landscape? Yet readers may wish for a little more meat to the descriptions of those who built eBay into the leading online auction site. Cofounder Jeff Skoll and CEO Meg Whitman, MBAs from Stanford and Harvard, never come across as anything but one-dimensional. The most refreshing detail about Pierre Omidyar, eBay's other cofounder, is that before making his billions in the company's IPO he always knocked off work after eight hours. Unfortunately, with Omidyar the book descends into the usual hagiography of high-tech entrepreneurs. Cohen, a New York Times editorial board member and former technology reporter for Time, is much more evenhanded toward the hordes of eBay loyalists and more than a few detractors. Their zeal supports his claim that part of the company's market dominance is based on a sense of community. The company has carefully cultivated this perception, one of the book's most fascinating revelations. In the early days, staffers routinely sounded off on the site's bulletin boards using pseudonyms, even denying that they worked for eBay when asked. Cohen's quality of writing and research is above average for a high-tech tome. One wonders, however, if his insider access he claims to be the first journalist to be granted this at eBay makes him a little too nice to the principals.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown; 1st edition (June 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316150487
• ISBN-13: 978-0316150484
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,066,174 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Ebaysian" history, people, business, culture--a great read, August 28, 2002

By	"mary1anne2" (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews

Not a seller or buyer on Ebay, I wanted to learn something about this e-commerce phenomenon. I hoped to get some behind-the-scene information but Adam Cohen gives us much more--an insider's look at how a tiny free website called Auctionweb, hosted by Pierre Omidyar on his personal website, grew into the multi-billion dollar company where 100,000 people now make their living.

This engrossing story takes us from the first days of Auction web--where Omidyar, as a lark, successfully auctioned a broken laser pointer to the evolution of a bare bones company where employees worked in cubicles and had to assemble their own desks from kits and finally to a very profitable and thriving business.

The most intriguing aspect of the story is the development of the Ebaysian philosophy--Omidyar's vision of a perfect market, an online auction, where the seller would get the market price for the item on that particular day. Part of this philsophy was involvement of the community in key aspects of Ebay operations. The community embraced this concept and, on a volunteer basis, staffed user bulletin boards giving advice to newcomers on how to get started, and sharing marketing and other business operations advice. After Ebay's IPO and the need to generate increasing profits for their stockholders, management ventured into some practices and ventures that violated this philosophy such as commercial ventures including a Disney site that competed with Ebay's own sellers. The Ebay community protested some of these ideas and management did listen and made changes.

Just as fascinating as the story of the evolution of the company is the story of the people behind the company. One fascinating character was Pongo, a message board regular who gave tips on adding digital photos to auction sites. This began one of the many Ebay spinoff companies, Pongo.com, which specialized in an image hosting business. The real person behind Pongo was Jane Dee of Sitka, Alaska, an isolated fishing village of five thousand on Alaska's Baranof Island, accessible only by ferry or plane from the mainland. Jane Dee's history was remarkable in that she was a former amnesiac who literally found a new life for herself through a business and social life on Ebay. Other interesting stories include a housewife looking for cheaper shipping supplies, who started a shipping supply company on Ebay and a man looking to have the winning bid in auctions who wrote sniping software and sold it commercially on Ebay. (To snipe is to enter a bid at the last few seconds and win the auction)

Ebay also reflects what is happening in our culture and current events. Ebay listings that made the news were the proposed auction of a kidney, a death row inmate trying to sell tickets this execution and collectibles that appeared after a news event such as the purported raft used by Elian Gonzales to enter the U.S. Ebay jokes are also now a staple of Leno and Letterman

While Cohen was given unique access to Ebay management and people, he also covers their mistakes and critics. One almost fatal flaw was a major system failure that brought down Ebay's system for several days and resulted in losses (money and confidance) for sellers. It was a real surprise to me how many people count on Ebay for their living, often selling their bricks and mortar stores and hiring people to do listings, close out auctions and ship products from their Ebay sales.

I don't read many non-fiction books but I highly recommend this book both as an engrossing story and a preview of what ecommerce and the internet may have in store for us in the future.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The how and why of a terrific idea, May 23, 2002

By	Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The legend of Internet auction site eBay's birth is irresistible: a smart young guy starts it so that his girlfriend, who collects PEZ dispensers, can find more. Pam Wesley, Pierre Omidyar's fiancée, did want more PEZ dispensers in 1997, but in fact this creation myth was dreamed up by AuctionWeb's (later eBay's) Mary Lou Song, who pitched it to Omidyar, reasoning later that "No one wants to hear about a thirty-year-old genius who wanted to create a perfect market."

The boyfriend, Pierre Omidyar, was born in Paris in 1967, and moved to the US as a six-year-old. He grew up in Washington, DC in a home that prized brain power and education. (His father's a medical doctor, and his mother has a doctorate in linguistics.) He loved computers early on, and snuck out of PE in order to tinker with his science teacher's cheap Radio Shack computer in a school closet, eventually teaching himself to program in BASIC.

But this was no asocial loner/misfit writing code in a closet. Author Adam Cohen draws a portrait of the young Omidyar as a dyed-in-the-wool humanist and idealist, a brilliant programmer who was also a sociable and thoughtful young man who fully believed that cyberspace ought to be about people and community. Cohen asserts that Omidyar "wanted his corner of cyberspace to be a place where people made real connections with each other, and where a social contract prevailed." Quite deliberately, and with no goal toward making its founder a gazillionaire, Omidyar's idea created, after plenty of tinkering, eBay: "a perfect marketplace."

Along the way there are evolving business plans, bright and devoted employees, and a consistent and profitable fiscal (though not cultural) conservatism. According to Cohen, eBay's leaders have been very good at recognizing a poor plan and rejecting it. The feedback practices that eBay pioneered - and so many have adopted - are fully described. There's an IPO, and the swelling and the bursting of the dot com bubble. Cohen is careful to contrast eBay with other big dot coms (Amazon most visibly) whose leaders have been seduced by schemes, nearly all of them involving overinvestment in new and unproven online companies, that consistently failed after bleeding millions of investor dollars. Issues of ethics, legality, fraud, plus the inevitable technological challenges of a fast-growing online site are intelligently and colorfully discussed, too.

The vast stuff of eBay is in here, too: knickknacks, new and used clothing, cars, furniture, pornography, antiques, books, Barbies and Beanie Bags, art and things you might not have ever thought existed. There are profiles of real characters - told compassionately and well. Cohen has a sense of humor, but he doesn't laugh at people - no matter how unconventional their practices and proclivities.

Cohen discusses the comparatively new psychological disorder of cyber addiction. Ebay took an interest in this, and sponsored a forum for users. People wrote to eBay's Mary Lou Song with their stories. One wrote," I love it when I hear my boyfriend snore, because that means he's deeply asleep and I can go downstairs and turn the computer back on." Clinical psychologists treat Internet addiction, and eBay is often - though by no means always - the drug of choice.

The editing of this book could have stood some improvement. I wished for chapter headings more colorful than "Chapter One," "Chapter Two," and photographs would have been a nice plus. The eBay story deserves at least a few good graphics. Some of the book's organization is spotty, too: Chapter Ten is a hodge-podge that would probably defy naming.

This is a full and affectionate story about one of our more interesting companies, the fruits of idealism, and (not coincidentally) some great ideas combined with smart business practices. Ebay really IS a community as well as a corporation - and Cohen makes that wonderfully clear. Although the subtitle is "Inside eBay," in fact the story begins in Omidyar's adolescence and concludes in 1999, when Omidyar leaves eBay to move to Paris with his wife (of the PEZ myth) and their baby. Cohen likes these people, and I did, too. I came away with a full understanding of what Cohen means by "the perfect store," and feeling that I'd gotten to know some of the visionary people and the sort of sociable optimism, brainy hard work and creative thinking responsible for eBay's beginnings and its continuing success.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars written by Cohen the fan, June 22, 2002

By	frances fairbanks (larchmont, ny United States) - See all my reviews

Cohen became such a fan of ebay that he glossed over his opportunity to provide real substance about subjects (including the big category of selling cars on ebay when you can't kick the tires of big ticket purchase). Nice character profiles and everyone looks good. Happy story, happy ending, fast read, and Cohen would probably love a position with the company. Photos of principles would have been nice since this is really a people profile as much as anything.