When thinking about online shopping, the first thing that comes in our mind is Amazon. Isn’t it? Amazon has become synonymous to online shopping to a major population not only in few countries but to people across the world. Apart from being one of the biggest online shopping destinations and selling virtually anything, Amazon has much more to its name. It is just not limited to kindle and lightening fast deliveries. Here we have compiled 40 astounding facts about the company and its intrepid founder, Jeff Bezos.
1. Amazon began in the garage of founder Jeff Bezos’ home in Bellevue, Wash.
Like all big tech-companies be it Google, Apple or Microsoft, Amazon too was founded in a garage of Bezos’ former home in Bellevue, Wash. The house still touts an oversized mailbox for all the book catalogs that the company received at beginning of its journey.
2. Bezos’ father was a circus performer.
Bezos’ biological father, Ted Jorgensen was a high-wire unicyclist. Bezos’ mother left Ted and remarried which alienated Bezos and his father. Today he owns a bicycle store in Arizona and only recently he was acquainted with the fact that his son is one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs!
3. Bezos didn’t believe in traditional meetings.
Amazon doesn’t have stereotyped regular meetings. As a matter of fact PowerPoint presentations are banned in the company. They have a different ritual when it comes to meetings. All meetings begin with a 30 minute silent reading session about the topic to be discussed with the main aim to allow critical thinking.
4. Initial candidate for the company’s name ‘Cadabra’
Bezos wanted to name the company ‘Cadabra’ as in “AbraCadabra”. However, the name didn’t seem magical enough after someone heard it as Cadaver. Cadaver.com was hence rejected.
5. Bezos even selected the company name “Relentless”
Another competitor in this name game was ‘Relentless’. In fact go ahead and search for relentless.com and see what happens.
6. “Two-pizza team”
While Amazon encourages team-work and team-spirit, Bezos coined the term “Two-pizza team”. It suggests that the number of members in a team should be limited to the number of people who can theoretically be contently fed on two pizzas.
7. Amazon is not as perky as the other biggies
It may be one of the biggest tech companies nevertheless it is anything but perky. While other tech companies will offer amazing corporate perks, Amazon stands quite on the contrary. To save electricity light bulbs from vending machines are removed, canteens aren’t subsidized. To top it all the new employees are provided with a backpack which contains a power adapter, a laptop dock and orientation materials. And guess what if an employee resigns, he’s obliged to submit these items back.
8. Amazon originally just sold books
When the website first went live it was just a book e-tailer. The first book it ever sold was Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Douglas Hofstadte on 3rd April, 1995. It was a research book about machine learning and artificial intelligence.
9. Bell ringing was a signal!
Well, this was a ritual for the initial days. In Amazon’s early days whenever someone made a new purchase, a bell would ring. However, after a few weeks the purchases happened so frequently that they had to stop this ritual.
10. The big programming glitch
The huge programming glitch enabled customers to trick Amazon in sending them money. All the customers had to do was order a negative amount of books and Amazon would credit the money in their credit card. 😉
11. Amazon was sued – “Earth’s Largest Bookstore”
In 1997, Barnes & Noble sued Amazon alleging that the slogan they used then “Earth’s Largest Bookstore” was false. However, the two settled out of court and Amazon continued to use this slogan.
12. Growth and work hours grew simultaneously
As Amazon grew exponentially day by day, employees’ work hours grew steeply as well. They were expected to work an average of 60 hours per week.
13. Freakishly huge number of employees
Amazon has more than 117000 employees worldwide! It’s continuously expanding further and further. Amazon has crossed the number of people Microsoft employs.
14. Fulfillment center
Amazon’s fulfillment center in Phoenix, Arizona, is made up of 1.2 million square feet. Many more centers are as big as this one. A former employee commented he had to walk over 11 miles per shift!
15. Amazon uses robots
It now uses robots in its warehouse to lessen the burden on its workers. The robots assist the warehouse workers in retrieving items. The robots are manufactured by Kiva Systems which was bought by Amazon for a huge $775 million.
16. Kindle was originally named “Fiona”
In the developmental stages, Kindle was named as ‘Fiona’ after a character in The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. In this book Fiona possessed a book-like machine which held all TV shows, libraries and human knowledge. The name seemed so apt to the developmental team that, they wanted to actually name the device ‘Fiona’. However, Bezos preferred Kindle.
17. Patent on 1-Click buying
Amazon holds a patent on 1-Click buying. It licenses it to Apple. The next time you buy something on iTunes with 1-Click, remember Amazon is making money.
18. Bezos is a tough boss, beware!
Bezos is said to be a very tough boss. He’s someone who doesn’t shy away after exploding at the employees. He’s famous for his outbursts on his employees and colleagues. Some of his vicious responses include, “I’m sorry, did I take my stupid pills today?”, “Why are you wasting my life?”
19. Amazon once sold a book for $23,698,655.93!
An Amazon store had sold a book on flies for the above stated amount. Surprisingly another Amazon store listed the same book for $18 million! Both the stores ensured that their store’s price would remain higher by setting such algorithm. Hence as expected the prices spiraled out of control.
20. Forty minutes was a $4.8 million loss
In August 2013, when its website went down for 40 minutes, it lost $4.8 million.
21. Bezos’s income
Despite being the CEO of the company Bezos only makes $81,840 per year. However, he owns almost 87 % of the company’s shares which is roughly $23.5 billion which makes him the 20th richest person in the world!
22. Bezos’ laugh
Jeff Bezos is famous for his laugh. Although, according to a former colleague the laugh “can grate after a while”. Well, he might be laughing at you instead of with you!
23. Bezos even got his better half for his laughter
He met his wife MacKenzie while working at a hedge fund. Their offices were next doors. MacKenzie said, “all day long I listened to that fabulous laugh”. She fell in love with his laugh. They hence got engaged and married. They have four kids.
24. Amazon’s arsenal of acquisitions
Amazon has a pool of acquisitions. The biggest purchase was an online shoe-shop for a striking $1.2 billion. The second largest purchase was twitch.com which was for another $970 million. It has acquired many more companies like NICE, AbeBooks, Alexa Internet, CDNow, Lexcycle, IMDb, etc.
25. Amazon’s side projects are also not less surprising!
Bezos founded Blue Origin, a space travel company in 2000. He is also currently spearheading the construction of a 10,000 year old clock. The clock is designed to tick once a year, the century hand will move in every 100 years and the cuckoo well, it will appear once a millennium!
26. Amazon has its own photography studios
To take really good quality pictures of the goods to display it on their websites it owns several photography studios.
27. Call the service desk. Who knows, you might end up talking to the CEO himself.
For better understanding of customer services process, every Amazon employee serves two days every two years on the service desk, handling calls, even the CEO! Who knows you might be the lucky one talking about service related problems to the CEO himself.
28. The logo of Amazon is more than a logo.
The smile which begins under A and ends at Z with an arrow indicates Amazon is happy to deliver anything, anywhere. The A to Z indicates that Amazon offers everything a customer wishes to buy online. It indicates the vastness of Amazon’s offerings.
29. Amazon’s S3 cloud platform can store 82 books for every person on earth!
82 books per person! That’s enough e-books to save an entire forest which is twice the size of Alaska’s Tongass National Park which is US’ largest forest.
30. Amazon serves 137 Million users per week.
This indicates it serves over 19.5 million customers daily!
31. Amazon’s unique users are 5 times more valuable than Ebay’s.
The average amount that’s bought in by a unique user is $1. Maintaining score Amazon – $189 and eBay – $39.
32. It is the No. 1 selling e-tailer in the world.
It’s the leading e-tailer in the world. Amazon’s web sales are 5 times that of Target, Walmart, Buy.com combined!
33. Amazon’s $34 Billion revenue is more than the GDPs of half of the countries in the world combined!
It has annual revenue of $34 billion which is 17 times Sierra Leone’s revenue which has a GDP of $1.9 billion and it’s 6 times that of Rwanda which has a GDP of $5.5 billion.
34. It named a building after its first customer.
It doesn’t happen every day that you spend $27.95 and get a building named after you! However, John Wainwright who was an Australian software engineer did just that by purchasing the first book that Amazon ever sold!
35. Just look at the number of customer accounts across the world!
If Amazon were a country for active users, it would roughly be twice the size of Canada!
36. Write about Amazon on Quora and you may get a surprise.
If somehow you manage to become one of the most viewed writers of Quora on topic Amazon (company), you might receive an email from the CEO of Amazon, Mr. Jeff Bezos congratulating you on your achievement.
37. What happened to Amazon during the dotcom crash?
The dotcom crash hit Amazon hard. From around $100 value the price of shares reached as low as $6!
38. Amazon’s door desks!
In its early times Amazon used to construct desks from doors to cut down costs. Even today the company rewards a “Door Desk Award” to employees who are particularly responsible for implementing some great ideas.
39. Apart from Kindle, Amazon has its other brands too!
Apart from Kindle, it owns some other brands. The Pike Street and Pinzon ranges cover kitchen and other household goods. Starthwood covers garden furniture.
40. Former Employees
Some of it’s former employees have made it big. They have formed some huge companies like Quora which was created by Charlie Cheever. Jason Kilar founded Hulu and Vessel.
If you know some more facts about Amazon please enlighten us mentioning them in the comment section below.
