The story of man who created Amazon.com

All of us have used Amazon.com at some point or the other.

Here is a vey interesting story divided into two parts:

Not to make the article too long i am only posting the first part today ...the story of the man who created Amazon.The second part which is about innovative practices of Amazon will be posted tomorrow.

Please read to find the VISION, THE CREATIVE EYE, THE EYE TO SEE THE GROWTH IN AN INCONCEIVABLE IDEA..AN IDEA WHICH SEEMED IMPOSSIBLE...AND THEN A DARING HEART TO INVEST IN IT WHEN ONE IS NOT EVEN 30 .

Try and read the last paragraph again over and over ..it is just so inspiring.


1. About the man who created Amazon.
Jeffrey Preston Bezos was born in New Mexico when his mother was just 17. Jeff never met his biological father. When Jeff was four, his mother married Miguel Bezos, an Exxon engineer from Cuba. The family moved to Miami, Florida, where Jeff attended high school.
From the beginning Bezos was something of a wizkid. He transformed the family garage into a makeshift laboratory where he conducted many experiments including a solar microwave, burglar alarm, infinity cube and countless others. In high school, Bezos fell in love with computers and was valedictorian of his class.
Bezos entered Princeton University to study physics, but soon returned to his first love, computers, and graduated with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering.
He was quickly recruited by several companies after his graduation, and eventually settled on Fitel, a start-up financial telecommunications firm. Bezos rose rapidly to the top, becoming an associate director just nine months after he was hired.
After two years Bezos left Fitel for Bankers Trust Company, where he oversaw the development of a program BTWorld – a software program that allowed the company's customers to check the performance of their pension plans.
It came as no surprise to anyone when Bezos became vice-president at 26, the youngest individual to do so. Soon after, Bezos joined D. E. Shaw & Co. as a hedge fund manager. Again, he quickly rose to the position of senior vice-president, and again at 28 Bezos became the youngest person in the company's history to attain such a high post.
In 1994, Internet commerce (e-commerce) was miniscule. One day in the spring of 1994, Bezos who was already crazy about computers observed that Internet usage was increasing geometrically and more and more people were getting excited about its astounding commercial possibilities. A few inventors were already trying to make use of the new technology. Bezos saw an opportunity for a new sphere of commerce, and immediately began considering the possibilities. The thought foremost in his mind: "What is it that users cannot get easily offline that will sell online?"
There were several congruent factors at play now. Internet usage was growing fast. PCs and laptops were exploding. People were hungry for information online. Payment mechanisms (albeit still with security problems) were falling into place. The government was supportive and wanted the Internet to be a driver of America's new economy as the smokestacks of Detroit declined. The technology was there: Intel, Microsoft and others were creating faster and more user-friendly computers. Everything was falling into place at the same time.
Bezos now started researching the Internet systematically. He asked himself: which business could be conducted more efficiently over the Internet than by traditional means? He drew a list of about 20 products which could be effectively serviced by the Internet, but the one that stayed with him was % books.
At the time no comprehensive online catalogue of books existed. The list would be just too big to post. It dawned on Bezos that

1.The situation was perfect for the Internet which could share a vast database with a virtually limitless number of people.

2.Bezos found that although major book wholesalers already had compiled an electronic list of their inventory they had no single location where users could browse the complete collection and place orders directly.

3.He further discovered that as there was no single bookstore large enough to stock all the titles available in print, the market wasn't dominated by any one player.
That was the eureka moment for Bezos. He realized that unlike traditional retailers, a virtual book retailer would have limited overhead by cutting down on storage and book store cost . This would also enable it to offer a much larger catalog of books in print and the customer could order them online which would save them time, money and energy.
D. E. Shaw & Co. where 29-year-old Bezos then worked weren't prepared to proceed with the venture so Bezos decided to leave the company and open the virtual store himself. Leaving a comfortable, high-salary job before you hit 30 isn't easy. Bezos had quite a few moments of self-doubt; nevertheless with the support of his wife, Mackenzie, decided to take the leap.
Reasons Bezos: "The framework I found which made the decision incredibly easy was what I called – which only a nerd would call a regret minimization framework. So I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, Okay, now I'm looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have. I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried."
 

nick18_in

MP Guru
In continuation with the story of Amazon. , here is the second part : The innovative practices and steps at Amazon which make it so successful.

Amazon’s Innovative Offerings
What makes Amazon so successful?

Through the years Amazon has consistently released innovative new products that second-guess what the user wants or will want in the near future.

1. Amazon added innovative experiences for users by creating online reviews, through which it let its customers submit feedback on books and other products sold on the site. It became a popular online feature. Consumers flocked to share their thoughts with millions. These further allowed users interested in buying the products to research them well before making the final purchase decision.
2.Amazon’s zShops are based on the principal of eBay.com. They charge sellers a monthly fee to sell their wares on the website. zShops have higher profit margins than the company’s own direct sales. Sellers who want to sell their products through zShops pay Amazon a monthly fee of $39.99 and a closing fee of 5 per cent on items sold for $25 or less.
3.By using the Wish Lists feature, customer can create lists of the products that they want from Amazon and save the list for online viewing by others or themselves at a later date. This has made buying presents for people much easier as you can find out fairly exactly what they really want.
4.Customer-friendliness has always been at the heart of Amazon’s success. The firm offers free shipping for multiple products ordered. It eliminates shipping fees for orders of more than $25. Although it costs the company in additional shipping expenses, the move has boosted sales massively and Amazon has decided to maintain the offer indefinitely.
5.Amazon Connect, the new program launched at the beginning of this year, features authors who can post messages directly to their readers via the Amazon home page. This gives authors and readers a way to communicate directly and without delay.
So Amazon has gone from being just place to shop to becoming an interactive community. Its success lies in it offering customers more categories of products, more conveniently and at ever-lower prices. Among its many technological innovations for customers, Amazon offers a personalized shopping experience for each customer, book discovery through Search Inside the Book, convenient checkout using 1-Click Shopping, and several community features like Listmania.
Amazon survived the dotcom bust because it had a real, scalable business model. It invested aggressively in expanding its new product categories and new businesses. By spending money on brand awareness and getting new customers, Amazon did whatever it took to make it a survivor. It spent time and money to find out what its users wanted and added new features continuously.
Talking about the success of Amazon, Bezos stresses the importance of timing and product category in the launch of a successful company: “Our timing was good, our choice of product categories – books – was a very good choice. And we did a lot of analysis on that to pick that category as the first best category for e-commerce online, but there were no guarantees that that was a good category. At the time we launched this business it wasn’t even crystal clear that the technology would improve fast enough that ordinary people – non-computer people – would even want to bother with this technology. So that was good luck.”
Bezos repeatedly avoided the topic of profitability versus an attempt to grow the business. A lot of investors put pressure on him to make profits and stop expanding, but with clear foresight he moved on and that paid off in the end. Bezos always focused on long-term value rather than short-term gain. It was a strategic position that differentiated Amazon from other start-up companies.
Bezos insisted that his firm reinvest money back into its core business and expand. Again, Bezos modeled this behavior for his staff. Even after he made billions on Amazon, he was known to drive to work in a used car. He realized that in making a successful, innovative business model work, some decisions were relatively more important than others. But setting a personal example and leading from the front inevitably distinguishes leaders and innovators from others.
Bezos cottoned on to the right time (the Internet boom), saw the gap in user demand (an online store), created a portfolio of products (books, CDs and others), stayed a step ahead of competitors (by offering steep discounts and free shipping), mitigated risk (by reinvesting) new capital and transformed incrementally when the need arose (specialty stores). The end result: a successful and innovative company, Amazon, that has stood the test of time.
Through the years Amazon has been reinventing itself and adjusting to changing user needs. Today the firm’s main website offers millions of books, CDs, DVDs, toys, tools, electronics, home furnishings, apparel, health and beauty goods, prescription drugs, gourmet foods, and services including film processing. There is no saying what Amazon will put up for sale tomorrow. But then that’s why Bezos named it after such a surging, voluminous African river in the first place.
 

bips

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
wonderful info... do u have more info on this - like the problems he faced after setting up amazon but befor it became profitable
 

bb7bb217

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
:SugarwareZ-245::SugarwareZ-085::SugarwareZ-021::SugarwareZ-149:Hello, this is the project on Amazon.com:SugarwareZ-245::SugarwareZ-116::SugarwareZ-051::SugarwareZ-214::SugarwareZ-182::SugarwareZ-277::hippie::director::sleep::painkiller:
 

Attachments

  • amazon.doc
    154 KB · Views: 10
Well, inspiring and motivational story for most if our entrepreneurs in India. Well, they are the leaders and consistently hold the number one spot. Closely followed by flipkart and snapdeal. Weel, they are ahead because of their 24 hour delivery campaign and now, they are trying to come up with 1 hour delivery campaign and if they succeeded then they will be far ahead of their competition.
 
Top