The story of AMAZON
From a simple online bookstore to the largest web retailer in the world in twenty years of activity!
The founder of Amazon.com
Amazon.com was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos. – Read the story of the Founder of Amazon –
Thirty-year-old Wall Street vice president DE Shaw , Bezos is an attentive witness to the web revolution in the 1990s and the ever-growing statistics regarding user usage.
Jeff begins to think about a type of business suited to the characteristics of the internet, he decides to leave his job and start a new business in this very world.
He focuses his attention on online sales and does specific research to understand which branches are best to focus on.
Initially he creates a list of 20 types of products potentially suitable for this type of activity, then narrows the field to 5 and finally decides to focus on the sale of books , guaranteeing the availability of delivery wherever the customer wants.
Bezos understood the potential of selling throughe-commerce, but he couldn’t possibly imagine what kind of giant he was giving birth to!
Amazon.com: technology to simplify consumers’ lives!
Jeff chooses Seattle as the headquarters area for Amazon.com , taking advantage of its proximity to a large book distribution center in Oregon.
He focuses on raising funds to best launch the company and works with developers to build a website and e-commerce site with simple interfaces suitable for every possible type of customer.
He is sure that books are the beginning and among his projects he thinks of expanding the categories of products available for sale as much as possible.
Amazon.com and its rapid growth
To establish himself on the market and beat the competition from all the new online businesses that were starting to emerge in the wake of Amazon.com , Bezos is betting everything on rapid growth:
in July 1995 he launched Amazon.com on the web , obtained his first major financing, after 2 months of activity he could count on over 20 thousand dollars in weekly sales and after just one year of activity he had 1 million registered customers.
You can order books with a few clicks, pay for them by credit card and receive them within a few days.
Amazon soon becomes a very popular site, obtains its first recognitions and, as expected by Bezos, opens the sale of new product categories :
in addition to books, music, videos, electronics, video games, software, housewares, toys, clothing and much more are introduced.
In 1997 Amazon.com went public , the website was improved and further simplified and the opening of a distribution center on the east coast in New Castle was announced in order to better manage the large volume of orders and shipments also in those areas.
Bezos, who always thinks about best satisfying Amazon customers , can finally reduce waiting times, improve service and offer same-day delivery of most of the parts in the warehouse also on the West Coast.
In 1998 Amazon.com acquired Bookpages and Telebook , respectively the largest online book retailers in the United Kingdom and Germany;
in 1999 he launched the new online auction service “Amazon Auctions” and in the same year Jeff Bezos was named “person of the year” by Time magazine for Amazon’s success in popularizing online shopping.
In 2000 he launched a new service that allows everyone (including small businesses and private individuals) to use the portal to sell their products.
Hard times for Amazon.com
2001 is the first year of arrest.
Amazon.com ‘s share price suffers a sharp decline and Bezos finds himself having to implement a cost-cutting policy including firing 1,300 employees and closing a distribution plant.
He is not discouraged:
even if the products present in the portal already have a competitive value, it introduces even lower sales prices and enters into agreements with important retailers, thus becoming not only a first-person retailer, but also an intermediary.
The strategy works, sales take off and in the fourth quarter of 2001 Amazon.com finally achieves its first profit .
Amazon.com: the relaunch!
Having put the toughest periods behind us, for Amazon it is a succession of new launches of product types, brands and acquisitions.
In 2005 “ Amazon Prime ” arrived in the United States, a premium subscription package,
in 2006 Amazon also opened the business to the delivery of fresh food products through ” Amazon Fresh “,
in 2009 a messaging service was introduced to announce the offers of the day and
in 2013 came the launch of the delivery plan using special drones called ” Prime Air “
Amazon’s growth is unstoppable!
Amazon.com: happy customers!
One of Amazon ‘s strengths is certainly having always focused its attention on customers.
“Happy customers” and always first place are the key words to Amazon’s success.
Bezos has always been convinced that to be successful you must first understand the needs of the users who turn to his company and meet them by trying to best satisfy their requests:
Otherwise, in his opinion, the failure of the business is “just around the corner”.
Jeff reduces advertising costs to a minimum, tries to guarantee free shipping as much as possible and maintain low and competitive prices in order to encourage new customers to make purchases on the portal and retain them.
Customer services…and possible economic returns for Amazon.com!
Amazon.com works to satisfy its customers, obviously trying to profit from this type of company policy.
Through specific tools, Amazon.com offers, for example, a list of products that could potentially interest different users based on the history of purchases they have made and, at the same time, encourage them to make new ones.
The possibility of publishing reviews on products and sellers has further favored the business as customers have an extra tool to decide which product is best to meet their needs and which seller to order it from.
Another opportunity given by Amazon.com to its members is to create wish lists in which to save favorite products that could turn into possible purchases .
As written in the previous paragraph, the secret of Amazon ‘s success is precisely the relationship established with customers:
a strategic plan that allowed us to quickly go from just selling books to selling millions of products all over the world.
Amazon.com today
What began as an online bookselling business twenty-two years ago is now the largestmarketplaceof the planet .
A company that has become as large and powerful as the “Amazon” river from which it took its name.
The headquarters remained near Seattle and the activity from which the main revenues come continues to be direct sales or as an intermediary between other retailers and millions of Amazon.com customers.
It has offices, headquarters, sorting centers, warehouses and customers spread all over the world.
Conclusions
Amazon today is considered the best portal on which to make online purchases.
His secret has always been to offer a vast range of products, focusing attention on those who would make the business grow: the customers.
The design team’s ability to predict moves and anticipate the competition then allowed Amazon.com to establish itself in the market, drawing great advantages…
An empire which, thanks to Jeff Bezos , his intuition and his great idea, gave rise to and subsequently revolutionized the way of conceiving shopping:
simple, convenient, fast and…just a click away!
If you are one of the few who has not yet seen the Amazon website: this is the link to the most well-known marketplace in the world
Learn more by reading the biography of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, the most famous marketplace in the world.
