Amazon.com Nears 10-Year Anniversary

mopslik writes "Amazon.com is nearing its 10-year anniversary. "Soon after Amazon.com Inc. debuted 10 years ago, Jeff Bezos and his handful of employees spent late summer nights packing books in a tiny warehouse, scrambling to ship a growing gush of orders. Today, the man who has grown accustomed to being hailed the king of Internet commerce runs a global powerhouse that did nearly $7 billion in sales last year, dealing in everything from banjo cases to wild boar baby back ribs." Although Bezos has drawn some ire from his collection of patents, there's no arguing that his company is one of the most successful online sites today."

Comments

Commoditization

[DanielMarkham]

FTA --

"I think Amazon's biggest challenge is itself. They've really raised the bar for the entire industry," said Kurt Peters, editor of Internet Retailer, a monthly magazine covers the business.

Amazon is generally considered to be one of the pioneers in the field. If I remember my business theory correctly, there is a certain amount of time between when a new market opens up and when it becomes a commodity. Right now, the technical hurdles are still high enough to keep Mom and Pop out of the Amazon business (to a certain degree). But Amazon has obviously set the bar and defined the standard, even coming up with this distributed marketing deal where you can reommend books and get paid for it.
At some point, however, you've covered all the bases. Amazon is already selling everything imaginable on that site, and they're exploring a lot of the horizontal and vertical market tie-ins. To me, this means that the industry is ripe to move towards commoditization: farming out all the stuff that Amazon does and connecting the creator of the material directly to the consumer. My two cents only.

Learn Management, Kid!

Look out, would-be celebrants

[Junior J. Junior III]

I hear that Bezos has applied for a patent on the 10-year anniversary.

Nice Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriusly, what does Amazon's patents have anything to do with their 10 year anniversary? Can't you have left that out of the story? What was the relevance here?

You may not like Amazon's patents, but it's pretty irrelevant to the subject at hand. To me, this was a cheapshot for the sake of pumping up RMS' and his hordes agenda.

I like how slashdot can't leave even this one story alone without trying to start a flamewar. The editors are the biggest trolls here.

That's the problem with the patent game

[grahamsz]

If your competitors play it then your hand is forced and no large corporation can afford to NOT patent random crap.

For the most part these patents only exist to create some sort of nuclear stalemate - where your competitors are too afraid to sue you since it's certain that they violate some of your patents.

Amazon.com's success.

[OrangeStar]

It's no secret why Amazon.com has succeded when many other online stores have fallen. They have fairly good prices, good service, and deals(like the current $25+ free shipping). It is just as easy as going to a real store, with no downsides.

They have a steady dependable business model of selling almost everything.

Amazon.com just works.

Note: I'm just a happy customer.

Amazon versus Yahoo board posters

[FunWithHeadlines]

In the late 90s, I was one of those investing in Amazon stock. I used to read the Yahoo investment message board for Amazon, and I remember all those posters who were absolutely sure Amazon was going down. They used to post detailed diatribes about profit and loss estimates, and how Amazon was fooling everyone with their accounting, and that their end was going to be soon and hard.

Yeah, yeah, I know, you get those types on every Yahoo stock board, and some of them are just shorts trying to scare people away. But the meme on the Amazon board was that they were losing money on every sale...but making it up in volume! Hardy har har. These people were absolutely convinced that Amazon would never succeed at their profit margins. And indded, Amazon was losing money every quarter.

But Jeff Bezos kept saying that the important thing was growth and market share and mind share, and that to go to profitability too soon would be a mistake. The Yahooligans roundly laughed at Bezos for saying stuff like that. But in the end, Bezos pulled it off. Amazon survived the dot-bomb, and is a solid company. But I'll bet anything if I went to the Yahoo board today (I'm no longer an investor in them, so I don't check), they will still be saying that Amazon's end is nigh.

Shows you the value of ignorning conventional wisdom if you have a new idea and a strong vision of how to implemenent the idea in the long term.

Who can take that over

[grahamsz]

Connecting the buyer and seller is all about trust.

Lots of people (myself included) would rather buy from amazon marketplace rather than eBay. Amazon probably take a bigger cut, but they provide decent customer service and bail you out when things go wrong.

Amazon have brand recognition and consumer confidence and it'll be a struggle for anyone else (particularly a non-profit organization) to garner that kind of support.

Re:Secret of Success?

[Anonymous Monkey]

Yes, but it can be a pain if you want to suprise your wife with a gift, and it pops up on recently viewd items next time she checks amazon. From now on all anniversary gifts will come from brick-and-mortar stores and be purchased with cash

Spammers.

[sadtrev]

One of my staff bought a book from them a year ago from a work account. Since then they've been sending me unsolicited offers for things I have no intention of buying.

Their e-mail contains no return or unsubscribe link. I believe that here in the UK that is illegal. I have struggled even to find a phone number or postal address on their website to send a cease-and-desist letter.

Yes, they're big and successful but their behaviour bears all the hallmarks of spammers.

How successful?

[syphax]

A quick glance shows that Amazon may actually achieve a level of zero net tangible assets (they've been in the red for years) this year. Similarly, another glance shows that 2004 was the first year Amazon actually made a real profit (2003 was about breakeven).

I am impressed, though, that Amazon actually hung in there through years and years of losses and now actually has a profitable, reasonably sustainable business.