The backlash against the “e-commerce pioneer” story (2001)

Excessive expectations and what they cost

The core of this share-price collapse was not a breakdown in the financials but the gap between the image of an “e-commerce pioneer” that the media and the market had constructed and the reality of a painstaking mail-order business carried by catalogues and fax machines. The space President Iwata built in the new office, organised around the call centre, symbolised a return to the origin — grounded, direct customer handling — quite different from the “internet company” the share price had been valuing in advance.

At the same time, the loose numerical control and disclosure that helped trigger the fall reflected a deeper issue: how far a company raised under an unlisted parent had internalised the discipline expected of a public one. Given that a lapse in Eco Mark labelling recurred in the same year, organisational problems clearly remained that a philosophy of returning to the origin could not by itself close.