Originally Written by Professor Guillermo De Haro

CASADELLIBRO.COM

Originally written by Professor Guillermo de Haro

“Look Xavi, let me put this into perspective for you: It’s as if we had an aircraft to go to Toledo. A Jumbo Jet to go a little further than a hundred kilometres”. This was how Nacho Somalo, Managing Director of casadellibro.com, explained the situation that existed at the beginning of 2002, in his recently inaugurated offices, having reviewed the latest notes he had made during the meeting he had just had with Xavier Solá, the CTO. Six months after joining together on the project to position the traditional Spanish bookshop’s online venture as the best of breed in the sector, Nacho had the feeling that he would have to be very convincing in setting out his recommendations for the future operation of the company’s website.

That cold January morning, Nacho and Xavi were agreeing on what their arguments would be to support their recommendations on the implementation of the new technological platform that would have to support their business over the coming years. A special meeting of the Board was planned for the following Tuesday to evaluate all the work of the past few months since he had been taken on and would decide if the current platform should be reused or scrapped and replaced by a new one that would be simpler, more practical and more appropriate to the new environment that they were beginning to glimpse.

In his days as a consultant, Nacho Somalo had had to face similar decisions on many occasions, but he had never before had to personally face the consequences, whether these were good or bad. This time he had the feeling that the future success and the results of the business unit would, to a large extent, depend on the decisions to be taken by this board, and he was aware that the stance his team took on these questions would have an influence on his professional future within a project that had excited him right from the start. However, now, having had a taste of his first victory, that of the period of adjustment during the first three months after he was hired by casadellibro.com, he felt he was going to have to get a situation that had changed considerably in a very short period of time back onto the right track.

THE ONLINE BOOKSHOP SECTOR IN SPAIN

The online bookshop sector in Spain went through a difficult phase at the beginning of 2002, due, amongst other things, to the failure of flagship and ground-breaking projects such as bol.com, submarino.com and crisol.es (see exhibit 4). This experience aroused many doubts about the feasibility of the business models associated with these ventures. The situation came about when the dot-com bubble burst, and it seemed that it was still deflating. However, despite this rather unfavourable climate and the new wave of pessimism generally associated with all online B2C (business to