The company began as an online
bookstore, an idea spurred off with a discussion with
John Ingram of Ingram Book (now called
Ingram Content Group), along with Keyur Patel who still holds a stake in Amazon.
[25] Amazon was able to access books at wholesale from Ingram. In the first two months of business, Amazon sold to all 50 states and over 45 countries. Within two months, Amazon's sales were up to $20,000/week.
[26] While the largest
brick and mortar bookstores and
mail order catalogs might offer 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could "carry" several times more, since it would have a practically unlimited virtual (not actual) warehouse: those of the actual product makers/suppliers.
[citation needed] Amazon was incorporated in 1994, in the state of Washington. In July 1995, the company began service and sold its first book on Amazon.com: Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.[27] In October 1995, the company announced itself to the public.[28] In 1996, it was reincorporated in Delaware. Amazon issued its initial public offering of stock on May 15, 1997, trading under the NASDAQ stock exchange symbol AMZN, at a price of US$18.00 per share ($1.50 after three stock splits in the late 1990s).[citation needed]
Amazon's initial
business plan was unusual; it did not expect to make a profit for four to five years. This "slow" growth caused stockholders to complain about the company not reaching profitability fast enough to justify investing in, or to even survive in the long-term. When the
dot-com bubble burst at the start of the 21st century, destroying many e-companies in the process, Amazon survived and grew on past the bubble burst to become a huge player in online sales. It finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001: $5 million (i.e., 1¢ per share), on revenues of more than $1 billion. This profit margin, though extremely modest, proved to skeptics that Bezos' unconventional
business model could succeed.
[29] In 1999,
Time magazine named Bezos the
Person of the Year, recognizing the company's success in popularizing
online shopping..
Barnes & Noble sued Amazon on May 12, 1997, alleging that Amazon's claim to be "the world's largest bookstore" was false because of it "... isn't a bookstore at all. It's a book broker." The suit was later settled out of court and Amazon continued to make the same claim.[30] Walmart sued Amazon on October 16, 1998, alleging that Amazon had stolen Walmart's trade secrets by hiring former Walmart executives. Although this suit was also settled out of court, it caused Amazon to implement internal restrictions and the reassignment of the former Walmart executives.[30]
On October 11, 2016, Amazon announced plans to build convenience stores and develop curbside pickup locations for food.[31] In December 2016, the Amazon Go store was opened to Amazon employees in Seattle.[32] The store uses a variety of sensors and automatically charges a shopper's Amazon account as they walk out of the store, therefore there are no checkout lines.[33][34] The store is planned to open for the general public in early 2017.[35][36]
In 2011, Amazon had 30,000 full-time employees in the USA, and by the end of 2016, it had 180,000 employees. The company employs 306,800 people worldwide in full and part-time jobs.[37]
In 2017, Amazon built a new downtown Seattle campus. A local charity, Mary's Place, occupied the space and was going to have to move headquarters. In order to build their new headquarters, the city of Seattle required they donate space to Mary's place, as the charity's building would be destroyed in the relocation.[38]
In June 2017, Amazon announced it would acquire
Whole Foods, a high-end
supermarket chain with over 400 stores, for $13.4 billion.
[12][39] The acquisition was seen by media experts as a move to strengthen its physical holdings and challenge
Walmart's supremacy as a physical retailer. This sentiment was heightened by the fact that the announcement coincided with Walmart's purchase of men's apparel company
Bonobos.
[40] The deal is pending regulatory and shareholder approval.