David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…I think he just stores inventory there. Well let’s talk about inventory. Ingvar goes off to the School of Commerce, and for the first time there he’s able to do what (I think) he intended, which was get access in the school library to real actual trade publications, import-export trade papers and trade publications. He starts writing to the suppliers all over Europe who are listed in these trade publications and asks if he can become a selling agent of theirs in Sweden. Now I say agent. At this point, he’s running an actually incredibly capital-light business. Most things I think he is not taking inventory. Some of it he is. He’s storing some pens and stuff, small goods under his bed while he is at college. But a lot of it, what he’s doing is he’s finding and aggregating demand in Sweden and sending purchase orders directly to the manufacturers wherever they are in Sweden or elsewhere, and they just fulfill the orders directly to the customers by mail. It’s pretty awesome. The first drop shipper.…

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