WHAT’S THE STORY?

IT was 25 years ago today that one of the world’s largest companies by value was founded.

Amazon was incorporated on July 5, 1994, by its founder Jeff Bezos, a 30-year-old banker with computing expertise who hailed from Albuquerque in New Mexico and whose original name was Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen, his name being changed to Bezos after his mother’s second husband adopted him at the age of four.

Amazon is now the world’s largest internet sales operation and the second largest employer in the USA, and Bezos is regularly hailed as the world’s richest person.

HOW DID IT ALL START?

IT all started with Bezos getting the idea of starting an online bookstore that would be more like a local book shop. There were already at least two booksellers on the internet, namely Powells.com and books.com, but Bezos always saw his business expanding way beyond books.

A graduate of Princeton University, Bezos really did work as a short-order line cook at a local McDonald’s when he was going through high school in Miami, Florida.

The National:

He graduated from Princeton with degrees in computer science and electrical engineering, and he moved seamlessly into the financial sector, becoming a head of development and customer service and then a product manager for the Bankers Trust before he joined hedge fund D.E. Shaw in New York.

In 1993, he devised his plan for an online bookstore which was originally going to be called Cadabra, but Bezos was told it sounded too much like "cadaver" and he plumped first for Relentless, and then for Amazon as it was the world’s biggest river system and Bezos always wanted to be the biggest.

Leaving New York for Seattle in Washington state, from his garage Bezos launched the company. The first book sold was Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought by Douglas Hofstadter. Famously within a few weeks, Amazon had sold books in every state of the US, and a further 45 different countries.

Bezos was using so much electricity that his wife Mackenzie couldn’t use the hairdryer so he invested in his first office/depot. He now has "fulfilment centres", a.k.a. distribution centres across the world. Back then, a bell would ring every time a sale was achieved. Bezos soon had to turn it off because it never stopped ringing.

With $300,000 from his parents, Bezos expanded the company, took on new staff, and began the gruelling work programme that has driven Amazon ever since – tales of workers being upset or just quitting are many, but so are the stories of people who have made whole careers at Amazon and remain extraordinarily loyal to Bezos.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

WITHIN three years, Bezos was ready to take Amazon to the market via an initial public offering (IPO). It was predicted to flop, but Bezos said his firm would soon be selling more books than Borders, and the IPO raised $54m. He was, of course, right.

When Bezos took Amazon to market with the IPO in 1997, he instantly became a multi-millionaire. Anyone who paid $1,000 for shares back then and still had them would also now be a millionaire on paper, as those shares would now be worth around $1.2m – that is just one indication of Amazon’s phenomenal growth.

Only a year after the IPO, Amazon bought its first company outside the USA – UK-based Bookpages, set up by Simon Murdoch to be a "British Amazon".

It proved that much of Amazon’s growth came about because Bezos bought up competitors. He also diversified from selling books to selling just about everything. With his background in computing, he got Amazon into providing the internet marketplace, backed up by a distribution business that is globally dominant, except for China. The introduction of Amazon Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Fire, Amazon Publishing, Amazon Studios and its web services all drove massive growth.

WAS IT ALWAYS PLAIN SAILING?

NOT at all. The company arguably expanded too quickly and Bezos was forced to take action to curb mounting losses which he did just before the infamous dotcom bubble burst.

The National:

In recent years Amazon has come under criticism for being too big, for not paying enough tax and for not paying its workers a decent wage while Bezos himself has been the subject of criticism over the past 25 years.

JEFF BEZOS – VISIONARY OR TOUGH GUY?

THE genius of Bezos was to see that the internet which, don’t forget, was in its infancy in 1994, would become a giant selling space. He was in at the start of the internet consumer boom and Amazon has more or less stayed ahead of the competition ever since. Over the last 25 years he has also invested heavily outside of Amazon into space tourism – he hopes to put ordinary people into space quite soon.

He is infamous for being a hard taskmaster, but it must be to his credit that he has annoyed both President Donald Trump – Bezos bought and revitalised the Washington Post which constantly irritates Trump – and the leaders of the Democratic Party.

THE FUTURE FOR AMAZON?

THE company is dedicated to growing internet sales and its many other activities. The company has over 600,000 employees, and in Scotland it has both the fulfilment centre at Dunfermline and the Development Centre in Edinburgh which is looking for more staff – "work hard, have fun, make history" is the selling point online. Bezos has taken a big hit in the wallet personally with his reported $35bn divorce settlement with his ex-wife Mackenzie, but Amazon’s growth plans will ensure that the company remains in a league of its own.