Bezos in 2014. He has accumulated incredible wealth as Amazon became a superpower
Credit: REUTERS
Having graduated from Princeton and armed with a degree in computer science, Jeff Bezos had several job offers when he embarked on his business career.
He opted to join Fitel, a telecommunications start-up, before moving into banking and then joining hedge fund DE Shaw in 1994.
The budding entrepreneur’s rise up the corporate ladder was meteoric, becoming one of the company’s vice presidents within four years.
It was the early days of e-commerce and Mr Bezos fell out with his employers when they rejected his list of 20 products which could be sold online.
So he walked out.
Setting up in Seattle
Mr Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, crossed the country to Seattle, where they set up an online bookstore. Mr Bezos invested $10,000 of his money to set up the company which worked out of his garage.
Initially, the company was not even called Amazon, but Cadabra Inc.
To Mr Bezos, it sounded like Abracadabra, but to his lawyer, the company’s name could be heard as cadaver, which was probably not ideal for its corporate identity.
Bezos registered Amazon.com in 1994
Credit: CORBIS
So, having also rejected the name Relentless, Mr Bezos opted for Amazon – and he registered Amazon.com on November 1, 1994.
Setting up an online bookstore seemed a rash move, given the market was dominated by retail giants Barnes & Noble and Borders.
The gamble paid off.
His philosophy that books should be easily available irrespective of where customers lived. Within only 30 days the company was raising $20,000 a week in sales.
In 1995 serious money started pouring in, with Mr Bezos raising $8 million in funding from the Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.
Going public and selling DVDs
The company went public in May 1997, aiming to raise $300 million, offering shares at $18 each.
In a matter of months, the company opened a second distribution centre in New Castle, Delaware. The 200,000 square foot facility was a sign of things to come.
The following year he moved into home entertainment, selling CDs and DVDs – once again muscling in on the territory which had been dominated by Barnes & Noble and Borders.
Amazon has faced criticism over conditions for its workers
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He always seemed to be ahead of the curve as e-commerce took over the retail landscape. In September 1998, he secured a patent for “1-click” – which gave customers the ability to complete a purchase with a single click of the mouse.
By that point Amazon’s share price had hit $65.88.
On September 30 he offered Amazon’s platform to other companies, effectively turning the firm into a third-party seller’s marketplace.
Surviving the dotcom crash
It was all too good to be true. The dotcom bubble burst.
The company’s share price, which had hit $106.69, took a beating as analysts fell out of love with the sector.
He had to lay off 15 per cent of the workforce before the share price recovered.
But all was not lost. Time magazine named “the king of cybercommerce” as its person of the year. At the age of 35, he was the fourth-youngest recipient of the award.
Bezos is set to turn more of his attention to Blue Origin, his space company
Credit: REUTERS
In 2002 Amazon expanded its offering. A company which was once only selling books offered electronics, toys, magazine subscriptions and kitchenware.
The company went international, moving into China in 2004. But this was one of Mr Bezos’s less successful decisions, with Amazon unable to break the iron grip on the local market enjoyed by Alibaba.
Innovations continued. Amazon launched Prime, a $7-a-year loyalty programme which offered free two-day shipping.
At the last count, there are now more than 100 million Prime members across the globe.
Alexa and Echo success
In 2007 Amazon, a company which started as an online bookseller, decided that there was a market beyond the printed page and launched the Kindle, which had a starting price of $399.
Later that year it opened its new corporate headquarters in Seattle, persuading the city to raise its height limits to permit taller buildings.
Amazon Spheres, part of its headquarters in Seattle
Credit: AP
Seattle was to eventually house 40,000 Amazon staff, who were working out of a massive 8 million square foot estate.
Amazon’s share price soared as it acquired company after company, such as the Zappos shoe shopping site in July 2009.
The vast wealth which Mr Bezos accumulated enabled him to invest in other interests, such as the human spaceflight startup Blue Origin in 2000.
But the most eye-catching investment was his decision to buy the struggling Washington Post in August 2013.
At that point, the Amazon share price topped $300.
The paper cost Mr Bezos more than $250 million. He invested in journalism and the paper is now profitable.
Amazon revenue
Its success and liberal stance have irritated Donald Trump, who rejoiced in calling Mr Bezos “Jeff Bozo”, especially after he went through a high-profile divorce.
Technological innovation continued with the company launching its voice assistant Alexa and the Echo, a smart speaker, in November 2014.
Row over working conditions
But the image of the company has been dented by unfavourable publicity over the working conditions at its facilities, especially during the Covid-19 epidemic.
In 2018 the company had tried to restore its image by raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. It also launched a television advertising campaign extolling working life at Amazon.
Nevertheless, the inexorable growth has continued unabated.
It had cities across the US and Canada competing to house its second corporate headquarters, before settling on Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia.
Amazon emerged as one of the big beneficiaries of the coronavirus lockdown as demand for online shopping went through the roof.
Sales in 2020 hit $386bn, an increase of 38 per cent on the previous year and profits nearly doubled.
Mr Bezos is stepping down at a time when Amazon’s dominance of the cloud computing market is under challenge from other tech giants like Microsoft and Google.
But having accumulated a fortune estimated by Forbes at $196.2 billion, he has little to worry about.
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