CART OF GOLD
As Jeff Bezos steps down from Amazon, we investigate how he became the world's richest man
More than 2.5 billion packages delivered each year, 14 square kilometres of warehouse space and a valuation of $1.75 trillion. Under its founder, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s growth has been unstoppable.
From a simple online bookshop in 1994 to a multinational technology company with its fingers in many pies, Amazon has become one of the most valuable companies in the world and the third-largest employer after Walmart and China National Petroleum.
This month Bezos stepped down as chief executive of Amazon to focus on his other ventures, including The Washington Post, space company Blue Origin and philanthropy.
Despite moving into a less public role, he will still have tremendous influence at Amazon and remain one of the wealthiest people in the world. Only a week after announcing his move to executive chairman, he actually became richer by $10 billion.
After a two-decade run, how did Bezos lead the company from an online bookseller to a $1.75 trillion global retail, logistics and internet conglomerate?
An early start
In a world before the internet, on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen was born to teenage parents.
From a young age, the boy showed signs of high intelligence and curiosity, taking apart his crib with a screwdriver and later designing a rigged alarm to keep his siblings out of his room.
At school, he would dream of creating permanent colonies that would orbit the International Space Station.
His parents divorced when he was 4, and his mother married Miguel Bezos, who adopted Jeff and gave him his surname.
After graduating from school as an all-A student, Bezos attended Princeton University, where he earned a degree in electrical engineering and computer science.
Showing an early interest in start-ups, he turned down lucrative job offers from the likes of Intel and Bell Labs, only to join a start-up called Fitel. He later joined the hedge fund DE Shaw, where he met his future wife.
The birth of Amazon
While working at DE Shaw in 1994, an article changed the course of his life. It said the World Wide Web was growing at an annual rate of 2,300 per cent.
“I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast,” Bezos said during his 2010 Princeton address.
He started by making a list of 20 items that could be sold online and settled on books.
After much consideration, Bezos left his cushy job and started out on his own. He briefly considered Cadabra as a company name, but settled on Amazon.
For Bezos, "the idea of building an online bookstore "with millions of titles, something that simply didn’t exist in the physical world, was very exciting".
Amazon was created in a garage. Ironically, all the meetings during its founding days were conducted at a neighbourhood Barnes & Noble, one of the biggest bookstores of that time.
“I took the less safe path to follow my passion and I am proud of that choice,” Bezos said.
Up, up and away
In 1995, the first book was ordered online from Amazon and, within a month, the company had sold books to people in 45 countries, generating $20,000 a week in sales.
By then, there was no looking back. Amazon had seemingly inspired an insatiable need in people to shop online. Recognising this, Bezos sought to expand the site's offerings far beyond books.
Today, there are only 14 things that cannot be sold on Amazon, including living creatures, guns , lottery tickets and tobacco.
Jeff Bezos and Microsoft founder Bill Gates say goodbye to 'Clippy' as Microsoft launches the new Office XP in 2001. Reuters
Jeff Bezos and Microsoft founder Bill Gates say goodbye to 'Clippy' as Microsoft launches the new Office XP in 2001. Reuters
Amazon held its first initial public offering on the the Nasdaq in May 1997 at a price of $18 a share, trading under the symbol of AMZN.
Market analysts questioned whether the company could hold its own against traditional retailers after they launched their own e-commerce sites.
Amazon soon outpaced them and continued to expand its online offerings, including music and video, becoming one of the few start-ups to survive the "dotcom burst".
In 1999, Amazon became the biggest online sales platform in the world.
Global expansion
Over the next few years, Amazon continued to grow, with annual sales rising from $511,000 in 1995 to more than $3bn in 2001.
Meanwhile, Bezos sought to diversify his income streams and became an early investor in Google.
In 2000, he founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight start-up. Not much was known about the company until it purchased a large area of land in Texas, where a launch and test centre was built.
Amazon introduced Prime membership in 2005 to boost its service for loyal customers, offering next-day delivery. Two years later, it unveiled its first consumer product: the Amazon Kindle e-reader, which let users download any of the millions of e-books available in the Kindle Store.
In September 2013, Bezos announced his purchase of The Washington Post for $250 million.
Bezos bought 'The Washington Post' for $250m. AP
Bezos bought 'The Washington Post' for $250m. AP
Bezos established a limited liability company, Nash Holdings, to own the newspaper.
Under his ownership, the newspaper reinvented its digital media, mobile platforms and analytics software. In three years after the purchase, it began to make profit.
Criticism and setbacks
Amazon has faced criticism over its treatment of workers for decades.
The company opposes efforts by trade unions to organise in the US and UK, even laying off hundreds of employees in Seattle in 2001 after a unionisation drive.
Union leaders say Amazon employs intimidation tactics and heavily monitors its staff to prevent them from meeting.
Complaints have been lodged against working conditions in warehouses in the US and UK. Performance quotas on delivery drivers are also said to encourage them to speed and not take breaks.
Workers strikes have been organised in Spain, the UK, Poland, Germany, Italy, France and England.
In September 2018, Bernie Sanders, a US senator, introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop Bezos) Act aimed at Amazon and other companies that he said benefitted from corporate welfare.
"Instead of attempting to explore Mars or go to the Moon, how about Jeff Bezos pays his workers a living wage?" Sanders said.
In response, Amazon raised the minimum wage for its workers to $15 an hour.
What comes next?
Amazon's success has been driven by the company's global reach, as well as its expansion into a variety of other sectors.
What was once a book-selling website has since moved into logistics, video-streaming services, gadgets, cloud services and even supermarkets.
In 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market, a supermarket chain with more than 500 shops across the US, Canada and the UK.
In 2020, the first physical Amazon Fresh supermarket opened in the US. The first shop in Europe opened in London in March 2021.
A month earlier, Bezos pledged $10m to tackle climate change through the Bezos Earth Fund. The company also plans to be carbon-neutral by 2040.
Part of that plan is a pledge to have more than 100,000 electric delivery vehicles by the end of this decade.
As Bezos attempts to improve conditions on Earth, his rocket company is developing reusable spacecraft to shuttle passengers to the cosmos.
Bezos announces Blue Moon, a lunar landing vehicle for the Moon at an event in Washington DC in May 2019. Saul Loeb / AFP
On July 20, 2021, Bezos is scheduled to go to space as part of the first crewed flight of the New Shepard, the rocket manufactured by Blue Origin. His brother Mark is scheduled to join him.
Bezos announces Blue Moon, a lunar landing vehicle for the Moon at an event in Washington DC in May 2019. Saul Loeb / AFP
Bezos announces Blue Moon, a lunar landing vehicle for the Moon at an event in Washington DC in May 2019. Saul Loeb / AFP
Words Alkesh Sharma
Editor Juman Jarallah
Graphics Ramon Peñas Jr
Picture Editor James O'Hara
Sub Editors Chris Tait and Thufail Muhammad
Design Nick Donaldson and Steven Castelluccia
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