In The Wall Street Journal Jason Fry outlines a few good examples that remind us the internet doesn't mean the end of the middle man, just the potential for a new and different kind of middle man. (Middlemen at the Margins)
Do I buy direct from my favorite band? No, probably not (unless it was Radiohead last Fall); I buy from iTunes instead of the Best Buy or the Record Bar. Same with Barbara Kingsolver or Paul Theroux. At least for now, I'm buying from Amazon and not Barnes & Noble.
"The middlemen of the digital world have earned their place. They keep me from having to know stuff I'd rather not keep track of (which company publishes an author or puts out an artist's CD), they've proved they'll deliver, and of course they save me time I no longer have. It's the last point that's driven the boom in e-commerce, letting us shop at 3 a.m. and saving us from phone conversations with customer-service drones. Give us a better way and we'll take it, adapt quickly and soon forget we ever did things differently."
In the world of furniture retailing, what does the middle man do, what value does he bring? Will he soon - if he's not already - be the victim of disintermediation?
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