Why Amazon's Going Up in the Air

During the late 1990s, when capital flowed freely to Internet startups and investors were pushing Amazon.com’s stock price into the stratosphere, Jeff Bezos was full of outlandish ideas for his company’s future. Colleagues called these reveries “fever dreams.”

At the time, Amazon was largely known as the biggest bookstore on the Internet. But Bezos had much grander visions of turning his company into the most dominant retailer in the world. One memorable fever dream involved storing products in the homes and apartments of local bike messengers in major cities. It was an answer to the logistics quandary called the “last-mile problem.” How could Amazon economically deliver products to customers’ doors without tacking on cumbersome shipping charges? Employees scratched their heads at Bezos’s proposed solution. They already had their hands full battling theft by workers in their warehouses. The notion of leaving inventory in random garages seemed insane.