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1-Page Summary of The Everything Store

Amazon’s Origins

Jeff Bezos was a young, hardworking man who worked at the D.E. Shaw hedge fund when he first got interested in the Internet and wanted to create an “Everything Store,” which would be like an online mall where people could buy things from many different manufacturers.

Amazon started as an online bookstore. It was a good idea, but it didn’t work at first because the internet wasn’t widely adopted yet. Then Bezos researched other products that could be sold on Amazon, and books became the best option. There are many books in print, but only two distributors control the supply lines for those books. Bezos left his job to start Amazon as an online bookseller.

Bezos’s Vision

Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, who moved from New York to Seattle because of the low sales tax and abundant technology talent. He named it after the largest river on Earth. The company pioneered many innovations, including a virtual shopping basket system, secure credit card use and book-catalog search engine. It also added consumer reviews for products on its site.

At first, Amazon.com was a book-selling business. Initially, they bought books from distributors and mailed them to customers. That process was very cumbersome and time consuming so Nicholas Lovejoy suggested that they assemble the orders on packing tables instead of using their desks for this task. Jeff Bezos agreed with him, saying it was a brilliant idea because Amazon still uses packing tables as desks today in all its offices worldwide.

Growing, Growing

By 1996, Amazon was growing at a rate of 30% or 40%. It needed to hire more people. Jeff Bezos asked them questions like “Why are manhole covers round?” as a way of measuring their problem-solving abilities. He created an editorial group and a personalization team to make the site better for each user. The Associates program started the affiliate marketing industry in 1997.

Bezos is an intense leader. He was focused on getting big fast and hiring experienced executives to replace the original employees at Amazon. Paul Davis left Amazon, became a critic of open source software, and Rick Dalzell from Walmart replaced him as chief information officer. Stan Kaphan knew that his time at Amazon was limited because of this new leadership team’s focus on growth above all else.

Deutsche Bank served as the lead underwriter for Amazon, and this helped them get their IPO off. They traveled all over the US and Europe pitching it to investors. Barnes & Noble looked into working together with Amazon but instead launched a competing site. When they went public in May 1997, they raised $54 million dollars which put them on the map and boosted sales. The original investors became multimillionaires because of this deal.

“Earth’s Biggest Selection – The Everything Store”

In 1998, Amazon changed its slogan from “Earth’s Largest Bookstore” to “The Everything Store.” It had more capital and bought IMDB.com (the International Movie Database), BookPages, Exchange and PlanetAll. It invested in Pets.com and Drugstore.com to sell toys and electronics as well as books.

Bezos emphasized that Amazon would take bold action and focus on creating shareholder value. He also mentioned the lawsuit with Walmart, which was settled out of court.

Continuous Innovation

Amazon patented a system that lets customers make purchases with just one mouse click. The system is called 1-Click ordering, and it’s very popular because Amazon already has the customer’s billing and shipping information on file. This sparked debate about whether proprietary business tools should be protected by patents or if open-source software should be shared freely among businesses.