1997: Will INTERNET SHOPPING Ever Take Off? | The Money Programme | Retro Tech | BBC Archive

It was supposed to be the future of business, but selling goods over the internet - e-tail, e-commerce, whatever you choose to call it - hasn't yet captured the imagination of the public. Has the potential impact of the internet been exaggerated?

Maya Even introduces a report by Nils Blythe on the future of internet shopping. Many British people still find the internet too daunting a place to shop, and it seems that the idea is only really catching on in the United States.

In the UK, Daryl Mattocks founded the The Internet Bookshop at the same time as Amazon, but business has been much slower than its US counterpart - partially due to the price differential between books in the US and the UK. Mr Mattocks admits that the future of online retailing may belong to the Americans.

Clip taken from The Money Programme, originally broadcast on BBC Two, 23 November, 1997.

You have now entered the BBC Archive, a time machine that will transport you back to the golden age of TV to educate, entertain and enlighten you with classic clips from the BBC vaults.

[markiliff]

3:35 That marching on the spot isn't fooling anyone

[hilaryepstein]

"Bothams have set up what's called a website". The dawn of a new civilisation.

[jonpotter]

I love archive clips like this because they were making a perfectly reasonable prediction at the time but it all sounds absurd in hindsight.

[bromley]

Love the bit about 'Remote Shopping' at Sainsbury's - I work as an Online Shopper at Sainsbury's now, collecting 8 orders of shopping from the shelves at a time, rushing around with a cart all afternoon... The idea caught on.

[CollapsingRealities]

5:02 '...To fax in a shopping list...' - That made me giggle. This video is so 90s that I feel like buying a Tamagotchi.

[nrgspike]

2:30 Just casually displaying dozens of peoples email addresses on national TV...

[screensoft]

It was 2004 when I started my webshop, still going strong today. The evolution is staggering.

[gunark]

I’ve never seen this episode of Look Around You before.

[Mkbshg]

Just checked and Amazon shares were 9 cents in 1997! Wish I had a time machine!

[FISHINGMINTY]

Crazy how old programs from as recent as 1997 look now! Good to see Botham’s Bakery website still going strong!

[ettinold]

One wet bank holiday in 1998, I queued at the Customer Services desk in my local Homebase for 30 mins to order a shed. It was coming from theur supplier in N.Ireland, but tte clowns at Homebase wanted another £20 to deliver it 3 miles from them to me. Amd Icd have to wait 10 weeks for it. The disnterested staff member scoffed at me when I said I would order one online - the guy in the queue behibd me kaughed at me.
I had to email the NI based supplier as they didn't have an online order facility, but I saved £70 and they delivered it for free from Irejand to Nottingham within 2 weeks. No one believed I'd ordered it online at the time.

[Cyberbeagle]

This clip was prefaced by an advert for Amazon. Irony.

[TeaPea]

Bothams Bakery's website about to get a shed load of traffic!

[trotskiftw]

The cameo from Jeff Bezos is honestly chilling

[Studeb]

In June 1998 The Internet Bookshop was sold for £9.4M to WHSmith. No Amazon, but a tidy profit for the owners I'm sure.

[ChrisEmmett]

Loving the GDPR breach of blindly broadcasting customer email addresses on TV.

[johntammaro]

If only baby Jeff knew his destiny back then.

[leejohnson]

My memories of the internet back in 1997 was that most people were still on dial-up connections. Doing anything online a was slow, laborious and joyless experience. Websites were poorly designed and anything other than plain text pages were slow to open and navigate. Purchasing anything obviously required entering bank details and that was quite a scary thing for people to do in 1997.

Once reliable broadband got into the homes the landscape began to totally change.

[dynamohums]

Interesting piece and of its time. One of the interviewees complaining about how hard it is to browse for things on the Internet. By 1999 - Google had exploded onto the market and Amazon branched out into providing a full retail experience and the rest as they say is history...

[maidbloke]

This is marvelous! Love the lady phoning in her Sainsbury's order. 😂