Category: History
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Origin Story – 7
Ok – back to systems. M.O.M. was necessary but not sufficient. We also needed HarveySoft – a multi-carrier shipping software. After M.O.M. hooked up with Harvey[Soft], we were in a position to keep track of inventory, process orders, and print shipping labels – a generative software relationship. With Harvey we could ship via USPS, UPS and FedEx through the…
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Origin Story – 6
I’m not writing The History of Amplifier; I’m writing a history of Amplifier. Jef and Joel had a vision that they were implementing when they founded Copernica/Amplifier, and it’s coherent and compelling. I’m not telling that story. I’m telling the story of employee number 2 – a 22 year old who didn’t know very much about anything when…
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Origin Story – 5
So we were wrapping up our first peak season – we called it Christmas season at the time because we weren’t yet pros – I think it was the evening of 12/23/01. Despair, Inc’s 2002 calendar was the main product for that season, and we were receiving a delivery of the second or third printing of…
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Origin Story – 4
I was dating Morgan at the time I got my first Materials Handling catalog from Global Industrial. Sometimes I’d be like, “oh, uh, I might should go water the plant,” and would sneak away to look at the catalog. I’m pretty sure Morgan knew that I didn’t keep any plants; the only thing I was growing was…
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Origin Story – 3
Of all of us on day one, I brought the operational experience to Amplifier. You see, after my freshman year of college, I had spent the summer working at Hydraulic Supply Company in South Florida [the location off the Sawgrass Expressway]. I specialized in packing hoses, pumps, fittings, and other hydraulic supplies. When it came time to make…
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Origin Story – 2
We were using Mail Order Manager (M.O.M.) as our OMS and WMS. M.O.M. was something like $100 off the shelf at CompUSA, as I recall. “Mail Order” Manager because at this point, direct to consumer fulfillment was primarily mail-order catalog fulfillment. Despair’s e-commerce platform was Yahoo Store, and it was cutting edge. Yahoo Store had…
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Origin Story – 1
Most people don’t know what a degree in Classics is. Those that do often presume that it equips you mainly to teach Greek and/or Latin. Unfortunately, I was not a great student of Greek or Latin and had no business teaching either. And you know the saying, “those that can’t teach, do logistics.” We started Amplifier (doing business…
Analogistical 