Jeff Bezos' Success Factors

Jeff Bezos' Success FactorsIn 1994, Jeff Bezos at 30 was the youngest senior vice-president at D. E. Shaw and Co., the Wall Street Investment Firm, earning a six-figure salary. However, despite an assured future with expectations to rise further within the company ray ban 3327, Bezos chose to walk away from it all and pursue what he envisioned to be a more promising venture. Upon first discovering the thundering growth of usage of the Internet (2,300% per month), he decided to start his own business on the, then, largely unmapped territory of the World Wide Web. The choice was a risky one to make since such companies were at that time largely untried, but Bezos recognized the possibilities that it offered.He began by writing a list of products - from software to CDs to books - he could see selling well over the Internet. Books was settled on simply because of the vast number of titles available; booksellers are only able to sell a fraction of what could be purchased while an Internet based bookstore would not be limited by shelving space.He stepped down from his position at D. E. Shaw and Co., and, with one million dollars raised from friends and family as capital, moved his family to Seattle. Seattle was the perfect choice because Bezos would have a wide range of choice in picking technologically savvy employees, and additionally, he would be close to Ingram Book Group's warehouse in Oregon. Work began in the garage of his rented house.Bezos, along with five employees, spent almost a year designing Amazon's easily navigable and user-friendly layout and working on the best ways to source books. With the idea that Amazon should not only be a place to buy books but could become a community of book-buyers, programs were developed to foster this atmosphere; one in particular allowed customers to write their own reviews of books and rate them. By September 1996, more than 100 employees worked for Amazon and over $15.7 million in merchandise had been sold. In 1999, there were more than 3000 employees working for the company generating more than $610 million in sales for over 13 million customers globally. Despite this, Amazon did not make any profit over these first four years. Choosing to pour everything back into promotion and building Amazon's reputation as a recognizable brand name, Bezos was covetous of the number one spot before turning to his own personal profits.Barnes Noble felt threatened by this new presence on the Internet and set up its own e-store. Through a fiery marketing campaign, Barnes Noble claimed that it could provide twice as many titles as Amazon. However, Barnes Noble was behind the times as Bezos had by then already branched out into selling CDs through Amazon. No longer just "Earth's Biggest Bookstore", Amazon now boasted "Books, Music, and more". Just before the 1998 Christmas season ray ban 3324, Bezos took Amazon yet another step further by expanding into toys and games. And he also instigated the "Shop the Web" program giving Amazon a commission when customers link to other (non-competing) retailer's sites. Following the success of eBay and uBID, Amazon joined with Sotheby's Holdings Inc.