The founding of Amazon.com
Launched in 1994, Jeff Bezos chose to sell books online because he felt the product was more suitable at that time based on the success of the Computer Literacy bookstore in the field in 1991.
In fact, he decided to leave his job as an executive at a Wall Street firm because he saw new opportunities with the advent of the internet at that time.
Did you know that initially, the name of the company chosen by Bezos was Cadabra Inc. which was later changed to Cadaver Inc. Later, it was changed to Relentless.com, but his friend scolded him because it sounded a bit 'evil'.
In the end, Bezos chose the name AMAZON because he wanted his company to be the first search based on the alphabetical order of A-Z, in addition to insisting that the core of the business is technology and not retail.
At that time Bezos stated that his main objective was to apply the internet by facilitating online transactions for users.
The initial thrust of the business was focused on selling books because Bezos saw the response to the product very encouraging.
In 1994, profits on book sales after just 2 months of launch Amazon.com was collecting as much as $80,000 per month. Interestingly, no one thought that 25 years later, that amount of $80,000 was generated every 14 seconds!
It turns out that Bezos' vision was successfully realized with the introduction of Amazon.com when it recorded revenue of $15.7 million in 1996 and $148 million the following year until he appeared in Time magazine's 1999 Person of the Year.
Starting from there, Amazon.com more actively sells consumer products from electronic goods, video games and computer software and then entered the public listing (IPO) on Nasdaq in May 1997 with a share value of $18 at the time.
The highest level reached by Amazon.com stock was last 2021 around $188, before shrinking back to around $100 at the end of 2022.
Challenges at the Beginning of Company Establishment
After experiencing business ups and downs where he was also sued by Barnes & Noble (in 1997) and Walmart (in 1998), Bezos finally decided to expand his sales product category and not be limited to book sales only.
In 1998, this is when The Everything Store was introduced and almost all product categories were listed in Amazon.com sales.
It turned out that the launch of the strategy was so successful that Amazon.com's total profit reached $1 billion and forged a name as the largest e-commerce company in the history of the world.
Testing the credibility of Jeff Bezos as the leader of the company, Amazon.com managed to survive when the Dot-com bubble crisis hit the world in the late 1990s which saw many companies and other giant businesses collapse.
At that time, investors began to gradually exit and withdraw from the company and as a result Amazon.com shares have plummeted from $113 to $5, a drop of 95%!
Later, the crisis began to subside and Amazon.com managed to step back to grow year after year.
The Glory of Amazon.com After the Crisis
Amazon's heyday is believed to be in 2002 with the launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS) which gathered user traffic and user internet patterns.
The introduction has opened a new chapter in the internet which is cloud computing (cloud computing), where users can store all data in the internet without having to own a computer.
Bezos' crazy idea appeared again in 2005 with the introduction of a free 2-day delivery strategy in the United States (US) known as Amazon Prime.
However, this strategy actually caused huge losses to the company on shipping costs, and it is said that it is still bearing those losses to this day. So how does Bezos make a profit with that strategy?
Amazon.com still receives profits through subsidizing its giant subsidiaries such as IMDb, Zappos.com, Audible, Whole Foods Market, Twitch and more.
Then in 2006, Amazon further strengthened its position as a technology giant by launching Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3) for the purpose of expanding cloud computing.
Jeff Bezos Predicts the Fall of Amazon.com
Although a visionary, Bezos is also a person who sticks to reality where he once predicted the fall of Amazon.com 3 times.
The first time Bezos said Amazon.com would fail was in 2013 when he explained that it is normal for large companies to experience periods of failure one day and in 2017 once again he had the same tone.
The third time he issued a prediction was about the possibility of Amazon.com going bankrupt 'one day' by outlining a company's lifespan of only 30 years.
Bezos' prediction almost came true in 2019 when he faced a marital crisis when his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, filed for divorce and took a 4% interest or about 19.7 million shares of Amazon.com with her.
However, fate seems to be on Bezos' side because he still has a 12% stake in Amazon.com to remain the leader and a billionaire even though the divorce issue almost destroyed the company.
But don't forget that Bezos is not just a businessman, he is also an entrepreneur.
Jeff Bezos has further expanded his business and developed Amazon.com by using drone services for the delivery of goods as well as venturing into space exploration with Blue Origin.
In fact, he is seen as the main competitor of Elon Musk who is also a candidate in the race to space, and these two figures exchange positions in the list of the richest individuals in the world.
