I know nothing about Jeff Bezos’ reading preferences, although a quick internet search cites The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro as featuring somewhere high up on his list.  So, I am left to speculate whether he has ever read The Ladies’ Paradise by Émile Zola.

Personally, I think it might be possible.  Possible, indeed, that he read the novel for its ideas on retail management rather than as a work of fiction.  The same internet search that revealed that Bezos rated The Remains of the Day also stated that he learns more from fiction than he does from non-fiction.

When Bezos launched Amazon in 1994, the company ran at a loss for nine years despite generating billions in sales.  Instead of chasing a profit, its initial priorities were to gain market share by offering lower prices than its competitors.

A very similar business model is outlined in The Ladies’ Paradise. 

The Ladies’ Paradise is a fictional department store located in Paris at the time of the Second Empire.  The description of the store is loosely based on the real-life shops, Bon Marché and Les Grands Magasins du Louvre.  The driving force behind expanding The Ladies’ Paradise from a modest drapery shop to a retail superpower, something akin to the contemporary Galeries Lafayette, Printemps or Samaritaine, is the store’s owner Octave Mouret.

As Brian Nelson quotes in his introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Ladies’ Paradise:

“Mouret’s store is a model of the new capitalism, of an economic system based on the principle of circulation, movement, turnover, and the constant and increasingly rapid renewal of capital in the form of commodities.”

By an adherence to this aggressive business model, Mouret is able to drive out of business all the traditional neighbouring shop keepers, using a strategy of loss leaders until he has gained a monopoly.

“On this observation he based his system of price reductions, progressively lowering the prices of unsold items, preferring to sell them at a loss, faithful to the principle of the rapid turnover of stocks.”

Amidst this price tumult, the short-term winner is the customer, able to pick up goods at knock-down prices.  But in the long term?

Since 1994, the Booksellers Association record that independent bookshops numbers in the UK have dropped by more than 50%.  And, whenever I visit Paris, one of the things that I most value about the city is its small, independent shops.

However, these facts don’t prevent me from finding Amazon an inordinately useful marketplace, and from me regularly popping into Galeries Lafayette, even if it is only to go up to the – free – roof terrace and admire the fantastic view.

© Fergus Longfellow

Fergus Longfellow is a mass of contradictions.