The history of Amazon

INTRODUCTION:

Amazon is the largest global retailer and a well-known cloud services provider.

Initially, it started as a bookseller and over the time it expanded to sell a vast range of consumer products, digital media, and its very own electronic device including Kindle Fire tablet, Kindle TV, Kindle e-book reader, and a media adapter for streaming.

In 1994, Jeff Bezos, the founder, and CEO of Amazon established the company as Cadabra but renamed it to Amazon in 1995 for the website launch.

The interesting thing is that, before he’d chose to word “Amazon”, Bezos browsed a dictionary to search for a word starting with “A”. He did this for the worth of alphabetic placement. And finally, he opted for the word “Amazon” because he found this word exotic and different. Moreover, the word Amazon also reflected his plan for the company size as that of the largest river in the world, the Amazon River.

The company has its headquarter in Seattle, Washington; and has its customer service centers, fulfillment centers, websites, as well as software development centers in various locations all over the world.

How did Amazon start?

The world’s largest retailer, Amazon which started as a bookseller, sold its first product i.e., its first book in 1995. This book was shipped from the garage of Jeff Bezos in Seattle.

The time changed and in 2006, Amazon became to sell a lot more than just books. It had sites and 21 fulfillment centers that were serving 7 countries across the globe. By that time, Amazon occupied over 9 million square feet of total warehouse space.

The story started as an e-commerce dream of a man who was Time magazine’s Person in the year 1999. The legendary business wisdom along with the innovation that sustained Amazon and continues to sustain it.

How does Amazon work?

Amazon is different from various other e-commerce websites due to its technology and infrastructure that supports its multi-hooked approach to the online market.

The best example of the overall approach of the Amazon towards the sale is the nested marketing techniques that are employed by the company to personalize the experience of customers. It says to know the customer very, very well. A stronghold of Amazon is customer tracking.

• A stronghold of Amazon is customer tracking. With their use of cookies, they send their customers all kinds of useful features including shopping recommendations based on recent as well as past purchases and to make their shopping experience simply amazing. Moreover, they send reviews and guides for the purchased products from previous customer.
• The multileveled e-commerce strategy is another feature of Amazon that puts it on the next level. At the Amazon platform, almost anyone can sell almost anything. Like the books that were sold back in the 1990s, now you can find Amazon selling the straight sales of merchandise. Since 2000, Amazon has started to list the products by third-party sellers. Now you can find auctions, refurbished goods as well as used goods. Amazon has become an ultimate hub for the online sale of merchandise.

HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF AMAZON:

Now that we have had a detailed description of Amazon and its working, we should move towards the main history and evolution of this worldly charismatic company.

Based on revenue, Amazon is the largest web-based company in the world. Since its very first sale of the books in 1994, Jeff Bezos knew that the secret to online success is the big and rapid growth. Knowing this secret, Jeff continued to build the company and made it the global leader.

Presently, Amazon sells each and everything from books to e-books to shipping container houses. Amazon has a complete range of products and has become a one-stop-shop. Furthermore, it is highly ambitious for the future so that it keeps up it's global ranking.  Amazon UK's acccounts for example can be found here.

The earliest days of the company and the highlights of its most important achievements are discussed here.

When was Amazon first started?

The most recent form of Amazon that is Amazon.com was first organized in July 2005 by Jeff Bezos. Amazon was initially named as Cadabra from Abracadabra, based on business insider. But later on, Bezos’ lawyer advised him to shift from the reference to the magic that seemed a bit too secretive.

Therefore, Mr. & Mrs. Bezos began to register a few names for the domain of their new promising venture. These domain names included Awake.com, Bookmall.com, and Browse.com, also, they registered a domain name Relentless.com and continued it. Even till date, if relentless.com is typed into the browser, it redirects to Amazon.com.

To opt for an appealing and interesting name to the company, Jeff Bezos went through a dictionary keeping in mind the value of alphabetical order. Jeff Bezos had envisioned his online store to be the largest in the world, therefore he opted for the name Amazon, starting from A. Also, “Amazon” indicated one of the largest rivers on the planet, the Amazon River.

The name Amazon.com was registered in November 1994.  Amazon UK Services Ltd quickly registered the UK version and similarly their other internationals businesses the Australian versions and others shortly there after.

The name was sorted, but then came the issue, what to sell?

Amazon wanted to offer convenience to its customers. The convenience that should be greater than anot

Amazon was based on the strategy to deliver the orders straight to the customers’ addresses all over the world. what we see Amazon today is a lot more than just books. According to Bezos, this was always a plan.

Bezos always intended and visualized Amazon as a technology company that solved all the problems of consumers being not only an online retailer but also simplifying the online transactions for the customers.

Amazon started selling consumer products:

Amazon began its business by selling books online. It was among the pioneers of at that time as only a few companies provided convenience at the level that Amazon offers. As Amazon grew, it started selling out other consumer products.

Here the point is, when did it actually start?

So here is a brief timeline of when did Amazon expand.

When Bezos saw that his initial business plan has been succeeded, he expanded the company into selling music and computer games in 1998. At the same time, the company also purchased other online bookstores Germany and the United Kingdom so that the services expanded internationally.

Later, Amazon further started selling consumer electronics, home- improvement items, games, toys, software, video games, and much more by the turn of the Millenium.

At the very beginning of the 20^th century, AWS (Amazon Web Services) had been launched. As the initial aim of Bezos was to make Amazon a tech company instead of an online retailer, the introduction of Amazon Web Services well-suited to the main ambition of Bezos.

By 2006, the AWS portfolio of Amazon was expanded with its EC² (Elastic Compute Cloud) which was soon followed by S³ (Simple Storage Service).

Although Amazon is extremely successful in its retail divisions, the expansion into digital services including EC² and S³ significantly boosted the revenues of the company which are seen today as the bulk of the company’s income.

By 2007, the first Kindle e-readers were unveiled. These Kindle e-book readers were comparatively low-cost handheld tablets that revitalized the book market. As the kindle succeeded, in 2011, Amazon entered the book publishing market with the service of Amazon Publishing. In the same year, the e-book sales of Amazon outsold the traditional printed books.

As of 2012, the Kindle comprised approximately 50% of the total Android-operated tablet sales.

That was the start of Amazon’s expansion and since then, the company continued to broaden up into many other fields and services including drone delivery, fresh produce as well as several other innovations.

At present, Amazon is planning to build its own airport.

When did Amazon popularize?

When Amazon was initially founded, many of the critics, as well as peers of Bezos, raised voice to show their apprehension for Bezos’ proposed business model. Among all, the most vitriolic was the financial journalists that often disparaged Amazon and referred to it as an Amazon bomb.

Many of them believed that Amazon.com will be lost out to some more developed bookstores. Among them were especially those who had already started following the suit and began their e-commerce sites.

It was a firm fact that Amazon did not become profitable until late 2001, but this fact did not help things as Bezos dismissed his naysayers and stayed firm because these were the people who simply did not have the sense to understand the business potential. Bezos knew that the success of an online retailer requires to “get big fast” and he did grow his company at a significantly fast pace.

In December 1996, the customer base of the company had grown to 180,000 which was quite impressive. Moreover, in October 1997, the company grew to the figure of approximately 1,000,000 registered accounts.

The revenues of the company which were around $16million in 1996, significantly grew to $148 million by 1997.

At this point, Bezos realized that the company needs more than just private investment to sustain its enormous growth.

In 1997 Amazon raised $54 million cash on the NASDAQ exchange. Moreover, it was able to use the stock to fund its acquisition strategy as well as enormous growth.

The revenues of Amazon grew to $600 million which was quite impressive.

The meteoric rise of Amazon in such a short period propelled Bezos into the public eye. He also became the Time magazine’s person of the year 1999.

Meanwhile, Amazon introduced its affiliate program which is now highly lucrative.

By joining this program, other businesses advertised the merchandise of Amazon to sell on their platforms. Later, Amazon fulfilled the order and pay commission to the company.

The affiliate program proved to be a keen business decision and grew from a single associate in 1996 to more than 350,000 by the end of 1999.

The main aim of Amazon in its starting time was purely the convenience of its customers. A potential customer no longer needs to visit a bookstore physically, to get the book he was looking for.

The ease of searching, choosing, and purchasing a book from your home was an amazing innovation at that time. Furthermore, Amazon also delivered the purchased book to your doorsteps within a few days that was simply incredible.

The fact that they started to sell more and more various products broadened up the appeal of Amazon to more and more consumers.

Amazon owed its success, similarly like many other companies who succeeded in the service they offered. Amazon’s service gained significant customer loyalty, which resulted in big profits for the long term.

Another innovation made by Amazon was the recommended product function for the customers.

It offers some recommended products to upsell according to the previous purchases of the customers. By doing so, Amazon increased its revenue even more.

Another appealing addition to the site of Amazon was the customer reviews section. This helped them foster a type of “customer community” that attracted more potential customers.

Amazon is now truly an international and dominant force around the World, they operate in all the major regions:  Amazon USA, Amazon UK,  Amazon Australia, Amazon Spain and Amazon Japan to name just a few.

CONCLUSION:                     

Amazon is the largest retailer of the online market in the world. It sells almost everything. It was basically founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos. It was initially a bookstore which grew into a presently known largest online retailer, the Amazon store. The word Amazon was selected on the basis of the value of alphabetical order and visualizes the largest river in the world, The Amazon River; the same was the dream of its owner and CEO Jeff Bezos who dreamt to see Amazon as the largest retailer in the world.

What brought Amazon to this worldly level was the business plan and strategy of Jeff Bezos who purely wanted customers’ ease of purchasing goods. Bezos started to deliver the goods at the doorsteps of the customers which gave him significant customers’ loyalty and support. For more amazing information keep visiting our site.

Bio - Adrian is the CEO of reportingaccounts and can also be found on Flickr