GROWTH PHASE
Amazon had an interesting business plan for those times: the company invested all its profits
in development. “Or we were the first, or we lost,” - then this concept was used by Google, and then
Facebook. But in the nineties, this approach was new, and investors were very worried that the
company did not bring money for five whole years. But when in March 2000, the dot-com bubble
burst, pulling hundreds of Internet companies to the bottom, Amazon was one of those that
survived. The company's share price fell from $ 107 to $ 7 (now one share costs more than $ 1,000),
but the company still had an airbag, which even allowed it to spend money on mergers and
acquisitions. During the crisis, the online store managed to buy competitors mired in debt and
become even larger.
AT THE BEGINNING OF ITS WAY, JEFF BEZOS DELIVERED TWO GUIDES TO
HIM:
• If by 2000 his company would sell $ 74 million worth of goods per year, this would be a
normal working result;
• If by 2000 his company starts selling at $ 144 million, it will be a success.
In reality, in 2000, Amazon's sales exceeded $ 1.6 billion. The seller became one of the
largest players in the online business. If in 1997 the company at an IPO was valued at $ 438 million,
now it cost almost five times more. And in 2001, the first profit appeared - $ 5 million in the last
quarter - due to large sales in the holiday season, on Black Friday and Christmas.
By that time, the company was selling not only books, but also music from DVDs. First,
selling only printed materials narrowed the audience. Secondly, Amazon has had litigation with
popular book chains because of Bezos’s claim that it is "the largest bookstore in the world."
Nobody argued that Amazon sells more printed products than everyone else, but lawyers decided to
find fault with the word “store” and insisted that Amazon is a broker that sells and not sells. Bezos
had to pay a tidy sum to the shops, and the issue was resolved outside the court.
In 1998-2000 sections of toys and electronics have opened on the site. In 2003, the company
had its own IT center, and then Amazon.Prime service for the most active customers and a jewelry
line with Paris Hilton. Amazon has taken over Twitch’s online streaming service, IMDB
(Kinopoisk, an American), bought Audible, a popular audiobook retailer, for $ 300 million, and
launched its first Kindle reader. In 2009, Amazon acquired for $ 1.2 billion one of the largest online
shoe and clothing stores Zappos.com. And personally, Jeff Bezos now owns the largest newspaper
in America, the Washington Post.
Amazon is still growing. The guys constantly buy new companies and offer convenient
services. Most recently, they successfully launched delivery using drones, and also opened the
Amazon Go offline store. This is a unique place where you do not have to pay for purchases: the
system automatically calculates how much what you carry is worth and removes this amount from
your account on Amazon. It is expected that such stores will begin to appear everywhere in US
cities in 2017.
Already, the company has become a huge part of the global economy. Every third online
purchase in America is made at amazon.com. Every second customer of online stores first goes to
Amazon and examines the prices of goods there to roughly represent what he is dealing with.
• The company employs 270 thousand people, 4 times more than Google.
• Amazon.com is the 7th most popular website on the Internet.
• Amazon's annual turnover is $ 107 billion (more than Google and Microsoft).
• The company has 304 million active customers who make 120 million purchases every
month.
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The online retail market is expanding by 15% per year, and Amazon is growing with it. And
Jeff Bezos remains at the helm, making all the key decisions. He devotes his free time to investing
in projects dedicated to the invention of drugs for diseases that are considered incurable.
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