A 1997 BBC Report on the Viability of Internet Shopping Featuring a Young Jeff Bezos

A classic clip from the BBC Archive featured a November 1997 episode of The Money Programme during which host Nils Blythe spoke with early internet retailers to learn if internet shopping would really be viable.

It was supposed to be the future of business, but selling goods over the internet – e-tail, e-commerce, whatever you choose to call it – hasn’t yet captured the imagination of the public. Has the potential impact of the internet been exaggerated?

He first spoke with the proprietor of a small bake shop that was filling orders over the internet. He also spoke with a young American named Jeff Bezos, who had just launched his book startup Amazon thirty days prior to the interview, as well as Daryll Mattocks who had founded the The Internet Bookshop in Cambridge.

Nils talks to Jeff Bezos, whose online book-selling company, Amazon.com, shipped books to 45 different countries in its first 30 days. …In the UK, Daryl Mattocks founded the The Internet Bookshop at the same time as Amazon, but business has been much slower than its US counterpart – partially due to the price differential between books in the US and the UK. Mr Mattocks admits that the future of online retailing may belong to the Americans.