Selling carpet on the Internet, hundreds of lbs at a time

Merlin Mann recounts an hilarious story from the dawn of the Internet boom, getting contracted to build the world's premier air-dropped carpet website:

He explained that he was fortunate enough to sell a national brand of wall-to-wall carpeting that was so far superior to all other quote-unquote carpeting that—well—it truly did just sell itself. See, to call this just the "Rolls Royce" of wall-to-wall carpeting would diminish the scale of how comprehensively the quality of this product exceeded its nearest quote-unquote competition. I was directed repeatedly to feel samples of this carpeting, touching the deep-pile face of God in every sumptuous squarelet. "Meh," I thought to myself. "It's carpeting. Whatever." But, outwardly, I beamed and enthused along with him, declaring that this was truly a carpeting concept that needed to be made available on the globalinterweb with all dispatch. Which brought us to the details of how we would execute this world floor-covering coup.

The content of the site was to be provided entirely by a slim bifold brochure that he'd gotten from the manufacturer. We'd put up a site where people could read this information, then print out a form, which could be used to indicate the color of carpeting they'd like and, well, how much of it they'd need. This, I should warn you, is where the plan went from squirrelly and unworkable to completely insane.

Once this form had been filled out by the consumer and faxed to Carpet Boy, various wheels would begin turning, calls would be made, and before you knew it, a very large roll of the world's finest carpeting was being air-dropped to a regional airport where the happy customer would–well–presumably collect the several-hundred pound delivery, somehow get it into a large truck of some kind, and then locate someone in the area who could install it in their house for them. What a breeze. It literally sells itself.

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