In 1993 Kelley Blue Book made its initial venture into the consumer marketplace by publishing a Consumer Edition of the Blue Book. It quickly became the nation's number-one-selling automotive book, often making the USA Today best-seller list. It features 15 years of used car values on more than 10,000 models of cars, trucks and vans and is available in bookstores, auto supply stores and other locations.

1995 was an interesting year, filled with surprising events - the Oklahoma City bombings, the O.J. Simpson trial verdict and the Dow Jones hitting record highs, once at 4,000, then 5,000.

Quietly though, something called the World Wide Web was introducing regular people to a medium called the Internet. It was innovation time again, and Kelley Blue Book saw a further opportunity to facilitate transactions between consumers and retailers. The company created a Web site, kbb.com, running on a single PC and offering first, new car prices in 1995 and then its famous used car values in 1996. Early in 1996, 20,000 people a month found their way to the site, largely by word-of-mouth. That number has grown a bit since then and now exceeds seven million visitors a month coming to kbb.com and millions more viewing Blue Book information on numerous portals and other automotive sites, including those of auto manufacturers and car dealers.

Kelley Blue Book