The Merchant of Bay Ridge

摘要

Like most 14-year-old boys, Joseph Cohen couldn't wait for his parents to leave town for a week-long trade show. But instead of planning a party or raiding the liquor cabinet, he called a car service to take him into Manhattan. There he bought Christmas decorations, toys and lights with $3,000 he had saved up working in his dad's hardware stores. He put the newly purchased goods online, adopting the name of his family's flagship outlet, Pol-steins, in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. For $ 100 a month he opened a Yahoo store account to handle receivables and signed onto some Web ad services, paying 10 cents to 50 cents for a link to Polsteins.com each time someone searched for, say, "Christmas lights." By the time his folks got home, he had doubled his money and restocked for fresh orders.