Back here on Earth, Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, is a business legend.
Way back in 1994, he was intrigued by the potential of the nascent internet. So, he quit his lucrative job at a hedge fund and set up shop in his garage to try selling books online.“ I was driving all the packages to the post office myself,” he told Charlie Rose in a recent wide-ranging interview on PBS.“ I thought maybe one day we would be able to afford a forklift.”
Bezos was taking a lot of trips to the post office in those early days. In its first month, Amazon sold books to readers in 50 states and 45 countries. Soon, Bezos added music and videos to the company’ s virtual store shelves.
He was thinking about expanding to offer other products but he wasn’ t sure what might fly, so he sent an email to 1,000 randomly selected customers to ask what else they’ d like Amazon to sell. At least one wrote back asking for windshield wipers.“ A light kind of went on in my head,” Bezos said.“ People will want to use this newfangled e-commerce way of shopping for everything.”
It was a pretty good hunch.
Amazon, which started with four employees, moved out of Bezos’ garage. It went public in 1997, and today the company is worth $ 292.6 billion.
It sells everything from luggage to brake pads and frying pans and does a brisk business in clothing, reportedly selling more than even Macy’ s.“ I think if we’ re not the largest we’ re among the largest apparel sellers in the world,” Bezos told Rose.“ There is so much opportunity. Nobody knows how to do a great job of offering apparel online yet. And we have tons of invention and ideas and working our way through that experimental list.”
Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, inspects New Shepard’ s West Texas launch facility before the rocket’ s maiden voyage.
Jeff Bezos announcing commitments to hire and train veterans and military spouses
Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla
While Amazon works its way down its list of how to improve selling, it’ s coming up with a seemingly endless supply of other products customers may need, from cloud-based apps to protect your corporate information, artificial intelligence devices to help you around the house, and compelling television series.
The“ everything store” does, in fact, sell almost everything you can imagine except maybe that forklift Bezos was hoping for back in 1994, although you can pick up a toy one and safety straps to use with a real one.
SOME SECRETS TO SUCCESS
Bezos built Amazon by employing what he calls a“ customer obsession” rather than a“ competitor obsession.” Simply put, Bezos has infused Amazon with the unshakeable commitment to always think about the customer first and foremost, and work back from there. This“ customer-centric point of view” is everywhere in Amazon, including the chair at the meeting table that’ s left empty for the( invisible) customer, whom Bezos calls:“ the most important person in the room.”
Another ingredient in Bezos continued string of successes is keeping his cards close to his vest. It’ s not so much that’ s he’ s secretive in nature, it’ s more that he’ s strategic and smart. Why tip off your competitors? As way of example, he points to building Amazon Web Services, cloud-based infrastructure technology for enterprises that includes data bases, analytics and security applications. Amazon had
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