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One of the giants to survive the dotcom crash, Amazon.com is as much of a landmark on the web as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris. In 16 years, “Wall Street Wunderkind” Jeff Bezos has grown the business from a tiny startup operating on second-hand computers in his garage to a global company with 12 major retail websites.
Amazon.com may account for around a third of all U.S. ecommerce sales, boast over 33,000 employees around the world and own such big names as IMDB, Zappos.com, Woot and LOVEFiLM, but how much do youreally know about the web’s largest retailer?
We’ve dug deep and found 10 fascinating facts about the etailing behemoth that you may not know. Take a look through the slide show and let us know in the comments any Amazon.com tidbits you find interesting.
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Amazon.com was very nearly called "Cadabra," as in "abracadabra." Founder Jeff Bezos rapidly re-conceptualized the name when his lawyer misheard the word as "cadaver."
Bezos instead named the business after the river reportedly for two reasons. One, to suggest scale (Amazon.com launched with the tagline "Earth's biggest book store") and two, back then website listings were often alphabetical.
Amazon.com sold its first book from Jeff Bezos' Seattle area garage in July of 1995. The book wasFluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.
During its first month in business, Amazon.com received orders from people in 50 U.S. states and 45 countries across the world.
Amazon.com survived the dotcom crash, but was hit hard. From a high of around $100, at one point its shares reached a low of just $6.
In fact, Amazon.com saw losses of $3 billion in its early years and didn't report a profit until the last quarter of 2001 -- six years after launch. It didn't see full-year profit until 2003.
Bezos, however, was not fazed by the drop. Fast Company reported on a presentation the Amazon.com founder made to a PC Forum conference in 2001:
"First, Bezos showed a slide focusing on Amazon's stock as it fell from its $100-a-share peak (adjusted for splits) to its $6 nadir. If you look at things this way, he said, you're a pessimist. Then he displayed a slide charting Amazon's cumulative wealth creation as a sharp upward line between two points: the day the stock went public ($1.50, split-adjusted) and that day ($11.64). I prefer to look at it this way, Bezos told the tough crowd, and that's why I'm an optimist."
One of the reasons that Amazon.com managed to survive was that it didn't go for the dotcom excesses to which other startups of the time succumbed.
In fact, Amazon.com's offices boasted cheap "door desks," described by former Amazon.com employee (and creator of the site's recommendation engine) Greg Linden as "the quintessential example of Amazon's frugality."
"Buy a wooden door, preferably a hollow core wooden door with no holes predrilled. Saw a couple 4" x 4" x 6' pillars in half. Bolt them to the door with a couple of scary looking angle brackets. Put it in front of a programmer. Door desk," explains Linden.
Some of the desks are still around today. The example in the photo above was caught on camera at Amazon.com's PAC-MED offices in Seattle.
As you can see in slide two, the Amazon.com logo began as an abstract river design. After a fewdesign changes, in 2000 the logo was re-imagined as the Turner Duckworth design we see today.
In the words of the brand design agency, the smile and arrow say "we're happy to deliver anything, anywhere."
In an Amazon.com press release from the time, the retailer stated "a smile now begins under the a and ends with a dimple under the z, emphasizing that Amazon.com offers anything, from A to Z, that customers may be looking to buy online."
When introduced in the early '00s, the logo was sometimes animated with the arrow moving under the letters, but it was nixed after some suggested the arrow looked a little, er, phallic.
To help understand the customer service process, every Amazon.com employee spends two days every two years on the service desk handling calls -- even the CEO.
"It's both fun and useful," Jeff Bezos told Bloomberg Business Week. "One call I took many years ago was from a customer who had bought 11 things from 11 sellers -- and typed in the wrong shipping address."
In 2010, Brian Klug saw an unusually expensive item for sale from an Amazon.com affiliate -- for almost $3 billion. Out of curiosity Klug decided to try and buy the item, despite the $3.99 shipping cost.
Although the order for the CD-ROM initially appeared to have been processed, Klug later received an email from Amazon.com saying it was "unable to complete the order." Klug also received a follow-up phone call from Amazon.com to make sure he had received the order cancellation notice.
In October 2009 Britain's Got Talent's Susan Boyle was the unlikely star to smash Amazon.com records.
Her album, I Dreamed a Dream, became the largest CD pre-order both in the U.S. and globally. It beat Norah Jones, U2, Bruce Springsteen and Coldplay to nab the top slot.
It might sound like a mad scientist's magnum opus, but Amazon.com boss Bezos is currently involved in a project to build a 10,000 Year Clock.
The clock will tick once a year, the century hand will advance once every 100 years, and the cuckoo will make an appearance on the millennium.
In Bezos' own words "It's a special clock, designed to be a symbol, an icon for long-term thinking." Described as being "of monumental scale" it's being built inside a mountain in West Texas.
As well as AmazonBasics and the Kindle brand, Amazon.com has three more "house" or "private" labels. The "Pike Street" and "Pinzon" ranges are made up of kitchen and household goods while "Strathwood" covers garden furniture.
As far as the names go, speculation suggests "Pinzon" is named after Vicente Yanez Pinzon, a Spanish explorer who discovered an estuary of the Amazon River. We guess "Pike Street" is named after the Seattle location, but aren't sure where "Strathwood" comes in. If you have an idea then shout it out in the comments below.
