Businesspeople Who Changed How Products Reach Customers

Mail order. Ward, a travelling salesman who saw rural Americans overcharged by local storekeepers, launched the first general mail-order catalogue from Chicago in 1872, a single sheet that grew into a thick book. Buying in bulk and shipping by rail let farm families order goods at city prices, backed by a satisfaction-or-your-money-back promise. Small-town merchants hated it, and some burned his catalogues.

The catalogue at scale. Sears, a railway station agent, began selling watches by mail in 1886 and with Alvah Roebuck built a catalogue that by the 1890s sold almost everything, later including kit houses. Its success depended on cheap rural free delivery and parcel post, introduced by the US government in 1896 and 1913. After Sears left, Julius Rosenwald built the giant Chicago warehouse that made the scale possible.

Parcel delivery. Casey founded a messenger service in Seattle in 1907 with a borrowed $100, and it became United Parcel Service, first delivering for department stores and then, from the 1950s, for any business across America. UPS standardised the delivery round, timed drivers' routines and kept ownership largely with managers and employees for decades. It made reliable doorstep delivery a background assumption for shops and shoppers.

Self-service. Saunders opened the first Piggly Wiggly in Memphis in 1916, where shoppers walked through aisles, picked goods from shelves themselves and paid at a checkout, instead of handing a list to a clerk behind a counter. He patented the layout and franchised it. Self-service cut staff costs and made packaging and brands far more important. He lost control of the company after a failed attempt to corner its shares in 1923.

Party-plan selling. Wise, a single mother in Florida, found Earl Tupper's plastic containers sold poorly in shops because people did not understand the seal, and began demonstrating them at home parties. Tupper took Tupperware off shop shelves in 1951 and made her head of the party-plan network, which gave many housewives an income. He fired her in 1958 and wrote her out of the company's history.

Flat packs and self-collection. Kamprad started IKEA as a mail-order business in rural Sweden in 1943 and in the 1950s, partly to cut transport damage, moved to furniture sold flat in boxes, collected by customers from the warehouse and assembled at home. Customers doing the transport and assembly is the heart of IKEA's low prices. His youthful involvement with a Swedish fascist movement, which he later called a mistake, remains part of his story. He died in 2018.

The shipping container. McLean, a North Carolina trucking owner tired of waiting at docks while goods were unloaded piece by piece, sailed the converted tanker Ideal X with 58 metal containers from Newark to Houston in 1956. Standard boxes that move from ship to lorry to train without unpacking slashed shipping costs and made global supply chains possible. They also eliminated most dock work and many port cities' livelihoods.

Distribution centres and data. Walton opened the first Walmart in Arkansas in 1962 in small towns big chains ignored, and built the business on its own trucks, regional distribution centres and cross-docking, where goods move straight from incoming to outgoing lorries. Walmart was early to share sales data with suppliers through its Retail Link system. Its low prices came with pressure on suppliers, wages and local shops.

Overnight delivery. Smith started Federal Express in 1973, flying every parcel to one hub in Memphis at night, sorting it and flying it out again by morning, a hub-and-spoke system that guaranteed next-day delivery across the United States. It let businesses hold less stock and ship spare parts and documents fast. He nearly ran out of money early on and led FedEx until 2022. He died in 2025.

Selling direct. Dell began selling upgraded computers from his university room in Austin in 1984 and built Dell around selling straight to customers by phone and later online, building each machine to order. Skipping dealers and holding almost no finished stock meant lower prices and less risk when parts got cheaper. Rivals copied it, and Dell later added shop sales. He remains chairman and chief executive.

Person-to-person marketplaces. Omidyar launched AuctionWeb in 1995, which became eBay, letting individuals sell directly to each other with feedback ratings to build trust between strangers. The company held no stock and made money from listing fees and commissions. It turned collectors' markets and second-hand goods into a national, then global, trade and set the pattern for later online marketplaces.

Online retail and fulfilment. Bezos started Amazon as an online bookshop in 1994, then built huge fulfilment centres, a marketplace for outside sellers and Prime, which made fast free delivery a membership habit. Amazon later built its own delivery network to bypass carriers. The model brought very fast delivery to many households, with persistent criticism of warehouse working conditions and of the power Amazon holds over sellers. He is executive chairman.

From post to streaming. Hastings co-founded Netflix in 1997 to rent DVDs by post, using light discs and prepaid envelopes, then a monthly subscription with no late fees that undercut video shops such as Blockbuster. From 2007 he moved it to streaming over the internet and later to making its own programmes, cannibalising the DVD business before rivals could. It is a case of a company replacing its own distribution method.

Marketplaces, payments and logistics networks. Ma, a former English teacher, founded Alibaba in his Hangzhou flat in 1999 to connect Chinese manufacturers with foreign buyers, then Taobao for consumers, Alipay to hold payment until goods arrived, and the Cainiao logistics network linking many delivery firms. Together they let small Chinese sellers reach the whole country. He withdrew from public life after regulators halted Ant Group's share listing in 2020.

Direct-to-consumer tools. Lütke, a German programmer in Ottawa, built his own software to sell snowboards online in 2004 and turned it into Shopify, which lets any business run its own web shop, take payments and arrange shipping without going through a marketplace. It became the platform behind many direct-to-consumer brands, giving them an alternative to Amazon's terms. He remains chief executive.