Amazon is literally considered to be a website that one can find anything starting from A
thru Z. Today Amazon is available as a mobile application and it is easy to log on, then type in
what you are looking for and buy within seconds. How did Amazon start and rise to what it has
become now? The history of Amazon, it was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and launched in
1995. During the 1990s, the popularity of the Internet and World Wide Web swept across the
world, personal and business computer were set up with internet .Internet led to companies trying
to sell online. Bezos was already considered extremely successful; he was the youngest-ever
senior vice president at Wall Street banker D.E. Shaw & Co. at the age of 30. Though Bezos had
other plans lined up for his commerce. Many names came about for the website, one being
“Cadabera” as in “Abracadabra” but others did not agree with the name and that’s when he found
the name Amazon.
While building his founding vision Bezos had a list of 20 items he was going to sell then
he narrowed it down the list to the five essential consumers wanted. The five essential consisted
of compact discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books. But then once
Benzo started to do his research defining what was his targeted market and what were the
demands people were asking for he found it. He found that due to the large worldwide market
for literature, the low price that could be offered for books, and the tremendous selection of titles
that were available in print. After that Bezos went ahead and made his head quarters in Seattle
due to its very high tech work force along with being close to a book distribution in Oregon.
Once Bezos set up website and went live in July 1995, Amazon became the number one book
related site on the internet.
According to an article written by James Press states that “In just four months of
operation, Amazon.com became a very popular site on the Web, making high marks on several
Internet rankings. It generated recognition as the sixth best site on Point Communications’ “top
ten” list, and was almost immediately placed on Yahoo’s “what’s cool list” and Netscape’s “what’s
new list.” The site opened with a searchable database of over one million titles. Customers could
enter search information, prompting the system to sift through the company database and find the
desired titles. The program then displayed information about the selection on a customer’s
computer screen, and gave the customer the option to order the books with a credit card and have
the books shipped in a just a few days.” Amazon success put Border Books & Music a company
that would generate around $1.6 billion in sales out of business. Today Border Books &Music
who had been around for decades is now just a memory. In 1997 Amazon decides to go public
in May after two successful years of operation, and with an initial public offering of three million
shares of common stock. A year later the company kept on expanding little by little to what is
