Amazon opens for business
On this day in 1995 Amazon officially opens for business as an online bookseller.Within a month the fledgling retailer had shipped books to all 50 U.S.states and to 45 countries.
Founder Jeff Bezoss motto was get big fast and Seattle-based Amazon eventually morphed into an e-commerce colossus selling everything from groceries to furniture to live ladybugs and helping to revolutionize the way people shop.Bezos earned an undergraduate degree in computer science and electrical engineering from Princeton University in 1986 then worked in the financial services industry in New York City.In 1994 after realizing the commercial potential of the Internet and determining that books might sell well online he moved to Washington State and founded Amazon.
He initially dubbed the business Cadabra (as in abracadabra) but after someone misheard the name as cadaver Bezos decided to call his startup Amazon after the enormous river in South America a moniker he believed wouldnt box him into offering just one type of product or service.In the spring of 1995 Bezos invited a small group of friends and former colleagues to check out a beta version of Amazons website and the first-ever order was placed on April 3 of that year for a science book titled Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies.When Amazon.com went live to the general public in July 1995 the company boldly billed itself as Earths biggest bookstore although sales initially were drummed up solely by word of mouth and Bezos assisted with assembling orders and driving the packages to the post office.
However by the end of 1996 Amazon had racked up 15.7 million in revenues and in 1997 Bezos took the company public with an initial public offering that raised 54 million.That same year Bezos personally delivered his companys one-millionth order to a customer in Japan whod purchased a Windows NT manual and a Princess Diana biography.In 1998 Amazon extended beyond books and started selling music CDs and by the following year it had added more product categories such as toys electronics and tools.
By December 1999 Amazon had shipped 20 million items to 150 countries around the globe.That same month Bezos was named Time magazines Person of the Year.In 2000 the company introduced a service allowing individual sellers and other outside merchants to peddle their products alongside Amazons own items.
Meanwhile Amazon continued to spend heavily on expansion and didnt post its first full-year profit until 2003.In 2007 Amazon debuted its Kindle e-reader four years later the company announced it was selling more e-books than print books.Also in 2011 Amazons tablet computer the Kindle Fire was released.Among a variety of other ventures Amazon launched a cloud computing and video on demand services in 2006 a studio that develops movies and TV series in 2010 and an online marketplace for fine art in 2013 which has featured original works by artists including Claude Monet and Norman Rockwell.
Additionally Amazon has acquired a number of companies including Zappos and Whole Foods.In 2015 Amazon surpassed Walmart as the worlds most valuable retailer.Two decades after its founding and with Bezos still at the helm Amazons market value was 250 billion.
In 2017 Bezos was named the richest man in the world.
