On July 5, 1994, Jeff Bezos founded a company called Cadabra, which he renamed a few months later to a more exotic name – Amazon, due to the excessive similarity with the word “cadaver”.
Bezos chose books as the first products he offered on Amazon. There was a great demand for books in the world, they had a low price, and there were a lot of them available. Thus, in 1995, the first online bookstore, Amazon.com, came to life.
Already in the first two months, Amazon shipped books to 45 different countries, and sales climbed to $20,000 a week.
The company had its first profit only in the last quarter of 2001. With a revenue of more than 1 billion dollars, profit rose to 5 million dollars. Since then, both revenues and profits have grown to extraordinary numbers. In 2019, Amazon had $280 billion in revenue, which is more than once more than in 2016, and the company has a market value of around $1 trillion.
In 2011, Amazon had 30,000 employees in the United States, and at the end of 2018, it already had 650,000 employees.
Amazon is considered the largest online retailer in the world, the second largest private employer in the US and one of the most valuable companies in the world.
The range of products and services is constantly increasing. Some of the more important ones are:
- AmazonFresh
- Amazon Prime
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Alexa
- Echo
- Kindle and Kindle Store
- Amazon Music
- Amazon Studios
With its online stores, Amazon is present practically all over the world. The table shows in which markets and since when it has been present.
If you are interested in selling on Amazon, send us a message and we will see how we can help you grow your online sales.