Robert Spector > Quotes

“Mom & pop stores are not about something small; they are about something big. Ninety percent of all U.S. businesses are family owned or controlled. They are important not only for the food, drink, clothing, and tools they sell us, but also for providing us with intellectual stimulation, social interaction, and connection to our communities. We must have mom & pop stores because we are social animals. We crave to be part of the marketplace. ”
― Robert Spector, The Mom & Pop Store: How the Unsung Heroes of the American Economy Are Surviving and Thriving

“Nordstrom believes that great service begins with showing courtesy to everyone—customers, employees, and vendors.”
― Robert Spector, The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook For Becoming the "Nordstrom" of Your Industry

“Don’t reinvent the wheel. Focus on winning one customer at a time. Be honest and sincere. Do what’s right. There’s nothing magical about this.’ That’s been my guiding principle. To make it work, you have to live it every day. Make it your mind-set.”
― Robert Spector, The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook For Becoming the "Nordstrom" of Your Industry

“Like all shopkeepers, they are deep-down optimists. They have to be, because every morning they unlock the doors to their stores, turn on the lights, prepare for the day, and wait for people to walk in and hand them money.”
― Robert Spector, The Mom & Pop Store: True Stories from the Heart of America

“That was a tremendous learning experience,” said McCarthy. “Never judge a book by its cover; open it up. If you treat a kid who is buying a $19.95 belt the same as a businessman buying a $1,995 Oxford suit, you will be successful. That kid might become a customer for life.”
― Robert Spector, The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook For Becoming the "Nordstrom" of Your Industry

“So in the first six months of working together, Bezos, Kaphan, and Barton-Davis wrestled with trying to find the balance between providing customers with an e-mail catalog and conducting business strictly on the Web.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“There are three groups of people with respect to empowerment: Those who get it. Those who really want to get it. Those who probably will never get it.”
― Robert Spector, The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook For Becoming the "Nordstrom" of Your Industry

“Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.”
― Robert Spector, The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook For Becoming the "Nordstrom" of Your Industry

“In those early months, Amazon.com hedged its bets by focusing on being both an e-mail store and a Web store. Under the e-mail system, when a customer e-mailed Amazon.com with a request for a particular book, the company would run a search for the book, and e-mail the results back to the customer, who would then send another e-mail to place the order.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“its 1994–95 version listed 1.5 million titles. Transferring that entire list of titles from the Bowker CD-ROM to the Amazon.com database was a tedious and time-consuming process because only 600 titles could be retrieved at a time. Kaphan compared the process to emptying a swimming pool using a drinking straw. The transfer of Bowker’s weekly update of changes, deletions, and corrections took almost an entire day.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“These core values include: Creating a customer-first service mentality. Producing an honest and ethical way of doing business. Delivering compelling value. Treating people with respect. Rewarding hard work and results. Choosing to err on the customer’s behalf.”
― Robert Spector, The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook For Becoming the "Nordstrom" of Your Industry

“Values define who we are, and if they change we will become something else,” Peter Nordstrom wrote in the employee publication, Loop. He described practices as “ways of doing things” and “behaviors that express our values.”
― Robert Spector, The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook For Becoming the "Nordstrom" of Your Industry

“CDNow, N2K’s Music Boulevard, and Tower Records.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“Bezos would reinforce to the warehouse workers how important they were by reiterating that the only elements that customers knew about Amazon.com was the website and the book they received in the mail.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“this primitive, infant technology.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“Our people don’t have one look, one background, one culture,” says Erik. “The common thread is they are themselves. They are genuine.”
― Robert Spector, The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook For Becoming the "Nordstrom" of Your Industry

“Kleiner’s most illustrious partner was the lanky, bespectacled L. John Doerr, who has been dubbed “the avatar of the Web” and is considered by many as the person who recognized the potential of the Internet before virtually everyone else.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“By the end of 1996, approximately 35 million people were using the Web, according to International Data Corporation, which estimated that the total value of goods and services purchased over the Web grew from $318 million in 1995 to $5.4 billion in 1996. More than half of regular Web users held a college degree or higher, and over 62 percent of the worldwide Internet users made at least $40,000 a year. Proof that Amazon.com was appealing to a particularly sophisticated and computer-savvy audience: the top-selling book on Amazon.com in 1996 was Creating Killer Web Sites: The Art of Third-Generation Site Design by David Siegel.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“Two months after moving into the Dawson Street warehouse, Amazon.com finally hired someone with previous logistics experience (before then, they were just making it up as they went along).”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“Bezos and company soon realized that the problem with using all these sources was that they would often provide conflicting information on the availability of the same title. The Amazonians ultimately figured out that the best way to deal with that dilemma was simply to order a book from a distributor—whether or not the distributor indicated the book was in stock—and then wait for the results. After comparing what they were told they could order—versus what was actually delivered—“We could then say, ‘this company’s information is reliable X percent of the time,’” said”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“Amazon.com, on the other hand, knew that the key to the user experience was the convenience of ordering a book online versus having to drive over to a store and buy”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“PlanetAll,”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“After working on the project for about a week, Mahesh Murth walked into Schroeder’s office and said, “163 books on marriage. 798 books on divorce.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“Social media guidelines are shared with all employees who participate and are posted for the public to view at the company website.”
― Robert Spector, The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook For Becoming the "Nordstrom" of Your Industry

“Nordstrom is looking to hire entrepreneurs—empowered self-starters, who seize opportunities to create and build their own businesses; to be franchisees within the larger Nordstrom franchise.”
― Robert Spector, The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook For Becoming the "Nordstrom" of Your Industry

“The Amazon.com system tended not to break down in those early days because of Kaphan’s insistence that things got done in the right way. Some called his attitude “technical pessimism.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“One of the reasons why selling books on the Internet was a feasible idea was the ready availability of an extensive database of books. Initially, Amazon.com’s database came from Books in Print, the book industry’s definitive reference source, which is published by R. R. Bowker of New Jersey.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“The article raved that the website “has become an underground sensation for thousands of book-lovers around the world, who spend hours perusing its vast electronic library, reading other customers’ amusing online reviews—and ordering piles of books.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“The model was spectacularly capital-efficient. On day zero, an ordered book would enter Amazon.com inventory. Eighteen days later (on average) a customer would buy it. Two days after that, the credit card company would transfer the money into the bank account of Amazon.com, which would have 53 days to pay the supplier. That meant that Amazon.com would have a negative operating cycle of 33 days. By comparison, in a physical bookstore, the customer purchases a book, on average, 161 days after the book is in stock. The store gets its money on day 163, and it has to pay its supplier on day 84, giving it a positive operating cycle of 79 days.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance

“At the end of that year, Bezos appeared on The News Hour, the PBS television news program, to discuss the impact of the Internet, along with Esther Dyson, editor of the computer newsletter Release 1.0, and Clifford Stoll, the astronomer and author of Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Superhighway.”
― Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast – An Unauthorized Revealing Account of Jeff Bezos and Internet Brand Dominance