Dot-Com's; it was a beautiful dream that came too early

In the summer of 1999, as the new millenium dawned, it was a time of good feelings, confidence, and euphoria in the United States. THE NEW ECONOMY! as all the self-proclaimed media professionals proclaimed, from the major news magazines to the televised media outlets. Unemployment fell to a national low of 4.7 then 4.5, then briefly 4.2, as the economists started reminding astonished citizens that economic theory cannot accept extraordinary low unemployment; that there always had to be ready pool of circulating employees. The economists seemed to be on to something because the hundreds of U.S. dot-com's sucked up so much workers that stories circulated in the news about dot-com hiring managers bringing in their aunts due to local labor shortages. The dot-com's were located primarily on the West Coast with a few in-between and on the East Coast.

Fortunes were built on dreams. The balloon inflated far too fast too big. Dot-com's like, e-Toys, based in Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, stunned the nation with its size and profits. People who invested $1,000 at the beginning of e-Toys were claiming their stock rose to $80,000 as the value shot up, split, and shot up more as everyone clambered to get in.
By 2002, e-Toys was a large-shuttered building in Santa Monica. Its remaining company officials mailed out official documents to stock holders stating that their stock was worth zero. They did this for the benefit of the stock holders because the IRS was coming after so many people who were dot-com millionaires, but only on paper, and now the paper was worthless. Eventually the IRS came to its senses and realized what was going on and later stopped demanding taxes from stunned stock holders who had no money to pay.

The dot-com concept was valid but its implementation was far too wide, too fast, too big, poorly organized and poorly executed, and as everybody knows, not backed up by revenue profits. Money was being spent at burn rates but money wasn't coming in to these dot-coms. The train was heading for the cliff but the cliff was still miles away and no one wanted to get off the party train. Dot-coms were quick to publicize the many benefits and perks to its workers, like lunches, baby-sitting services, massages, weight and exercise rooms, employees skimming around the company floors on scooters, and all kind of youthful yuppie stuff like that. In return, the happy dot-com workers were willing to put in 12-hour work days, five days a week. When the dot-coms tanked and vanished, traditional corporate America demanded long-working hours from employees but without any of the nonsense perks and benefits of the dot-com's. Americans found themselves trudging to work as if it was back in the 1900s.

The dot-com's did not go extinct like the world of the mammals at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch. The adaptable ones survived while the majority died out. History repeated itself. Hundreds of American car manufacturers existed in the 1920s but by the end of WWII only a handful survived. By the end of the 20th century, that number was less in the U.S. Dot-coms are back, bigger but much fewer. Everyone knows about the AMAZON phenomenon that is causing paradigm changes in traditional retail chains, even as I write this. In the news, Best Buy is teetering on the similar fate of Circuit City, The Good Guys, and Borders. Yet six months ago on the Internet some business expert predicted this because Best Buy was failing to adapt but flailing around in a futile desperate attempt to simply generate income, no matter how and what, even if the customer was not interested. The Best Buy corporate bosses may have read the warning six months ago but it looks like they dismissed it as rantings of some rude outsider making comments about something he didn't know. Best Buy is just an example of what I'm writing about; this is NOT an anti-Best Buy article. This is a warning that a company like Best Buy does not have to dig its heels in to reinforce failure but must somehow find the inner courage to accept reality and adapt. Darwin was wrong. It's not the strongest and fittest that survive in Nature; it's the most adaptable that survives and thrives. Many computer literate people find themselves purchasing on-line more and more. That is proof the dot-com concept was valid. The challenge is for today's 21st century businesses to see how they can tap into or plug into that strategy in a way that meets the customer's wants and needs. It's like finding the right sized round peg to fit the round hole and not try to jam a square peg inside instead.