Jeff Bezos:

There are so many things that can go wrong. And when we launched that store in July of 1995, we were shocked at the customer response. Literally in the first 30 days, we had orders from all 50 states and 45 different countries, and we were woefully unprepared from an operational point of view to handle that kind of volume.

In fact, we quickly expanded. We talked to our landlord and we expanded into a 2,000-square-foot, basement warehouse space that had six-foot ceilings.

We had so many orders that we weren't ready for, that we had no real organization in our distribution centers at all. In fact, we were packing on our hands and knees on a hard concrete floor.

I remember- just to show you how stupid I can be- my only defense is that it was late--but I- we were packing these things, everybody, everybody in the company, and I had this brainstorm, as I said to the person next to me, "This packing is killing me! You know, my back hurts. This is killing my knees on this hard cement floor; and the person said. "Yeah, I know what you mean.” And I said, "You know what we need?" This is my brilliant insight. "We need kneepads!" I was very serious. This person looked at me like I was the stupidest person they'd ever seen. They're like, I'm working for this person, this is great. And um, said, "What we need is packing tables.”

Jeff Bezos:

There are so many things that can go wrong. And when we launched that store in July of 1995, we were shocked at the customer response. Literally in the first 30 days, we had orders from all 50 states and 45 different countries, and we were woefully unprepared from an operational point of view to handle that kind of volume.

In fact, we quickly expanded. We talked to our landlord and we expanded into a 2,000-square-foot, basement warehouse space that had six-foot ceilings.

We had so many orders that we weren't ready for, that we had no real organization in our distribution centers at all. In fact, we were packing on our hands and knees on a hard concrete floor.

I remember- just to show you how stupid I can be- my only defense is that it was late--but I- we were packing these things, everybody, everybody in the company, and I had this brainstorm, as I said to the person next to me, "This packing is killing me! You know, my back hurts. This is killing my knees on this hard cement floor; and the person said. "Yeah, I know what you mean.” And I said, "You know what we need?" This is my brilliant insight. "We need kneepads!" I was very serious. This person looked at me like I was the stupidest person they'd ever seen. They're like, I'm working for this person, this is great. And um, said, "What we need is packing tables.”