Zappos actually started with this Wizard of Oz method. Back in the day, founder Nick Swinmurn wanted to see whether people would really buy shoes online. He put a simple website up on WordPress. Visitors could view and then buy the shoes online. But, on the backend, it was just Nick, singlehandedly running around, buying shoes from Sears and shipping them out from UPS himself, as each order came in. There was no infrastructure, no inventory of shoes, no person manning the phones. It was simply a page where the founder waited for orders. As soon as the orders came in, he went and fulfilled
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