Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon.com. Amazon is consistently ranked as one of the top retail sites on the Internet and offers over one million titles via its Web site, located at http://www.amazon.com.

Triggered by his grandfather, a retired Atomic Energy Commission manager, Bezos dreamed at age 14 of being an astronaut or physicist and filled his family garage with science and engineering projects. He spent summers on grandfather's ranch in Cotulla, Texas. By age 16, he could fix windmills, use an arc welder and castrate cattle. In his late grade school years, Bezos became fascinated with the Infinity Cube, which uses a set of motorized mirrors to let the user stare into "infinity." When his mother said its $20 cost was too expensive, he bought the pieces cheaply and built it himself. This story is documented in "Turning On Bright Minds: A Parent Looks at Gifted Education in Texas." Incidentally, the book, published locally in the Houston area in 1977, is not available on Amazon.com.

 After graduating from Princeton summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1986, Bezos joined FITEL, a high-tech start-up company in New York. In 1988, Bezos joined Bankers Trust Company, New York, leading the development of computer systems that helped manage $250+ billion in assets and becoming their youngest vice president in February, 1990. From 1990 to 1994, Bezos helped build one of the most technically sophisticated and successful quantitative hedge funds on Wall Street for D.E. Shaw & Co., New York, becoming their youngest senior vice president in 1992. When he discovered the Internet was growing at 2,300 percent annually, he and wife MacKenzie moved to Seattle and began online business out of their rented suburban house. He founded Amazon.com, an Internet retailer of books, music, videos and more.

Amazon.com is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. His team spent a year developing database programs and creating the Web site. Amazon.com opened its virtual doors for business in July 1995. Chose Seattle for its proximity to two major book wholesalers and pool of talented computer professionals. Amazon.com beat 113-year-old Sears in market capitalization value, $17 billion vs. $15.8 billion in 1998 (market capitalization -- a measure of a company's financial success -- is the number of outstanding stock shares multiplied by stock price). Amazon.com has not made a profit and doesn't expect to for years. It is using any extra cash for marketing and acquiring other companies. Other Web sites can recommend books and link to Amazon.com; linked sites collect a 15 percent commission on each book sold from its site; more than 30,000 affiliates link to Amazon.com. Publicly traded on NASDAQ stock exchange as "AMZN" since May 1997. Each of Amazon.com's 1,600 employees gets stock options that vest over a five-year period; some are now millionaires. Scaling internal systems to meet rapid growth and low overhead by using centralized distribution. By the end of 1998, more than 4.5 million people from 160 countries had shopped at Amazon.com, making it the leading online shopping site. In 1998, sales topped $500 million. Amazon.com has become a model for Internet companies by putting market share ahead of profits and making acquisitions funded by meteoric market capitalization. Founder Jeff Bezos and his family own about 34% of the firm.

Jeffrey P.Bezos is keenly interested in anything that can be revolutionized by computers. He is known to have explosively loud laughter. He is an avid reader who enjoys science fiction and read 35 books in 1998. His favorite is, "Remains of the Day," by Kazuo Ishiguro, captured his interest with its "live your life'' and "it's not too late'' themes. People say he is gregarious, self-effacing, intellectual, witty, a self-described nerd. He walks with a loping gait and loves Amazon.com obsessively. He was chosen as 1999 Person of the Year by the TIMES Magazine.

Why did Jeff Bezos decide to name his company Amazon.com?
 Bezos and his team spent a year creating their Web site and developing the database programs that they knew they would need. They hired a marketing firm to test several names for the new online company with consumers. Amazon was picked because words starting with "A" show up on search-engine lists first.

What can you do when you visit Amazon.com?
Amazon.com tries to offer the broadest possible selections while being customer-friendly and easy to navigate. Search engines make it possible to find books by author, title, subject or keyword and music by artist, CD title or song title. Reviews are provided and readers and listeners are allowed to comment on books and music as well.

Every time a customer buys a book, Amazon.com's computer uses the information to recommend similar books. Bezos says, "The goal here is not rampant consumerism. The idea is to use technology to capture information about consumers and their interests and match individuals with other products they might like, including items they don't even know exist." (USA Today)

Quotables By Jeff Bezos
"The wake-up call was reading that Web use was growing 2,300 percent a year."
(People Weekly)
 "I've always been at the intersection of computers and whatever they can revolutionize."
(Business Week)
 "Our job is to make sure our service, in every dimension, is better than everybody else's."
(Nation's Business)
 "Brand names are more important online than they are in the physical world."
(Inc.)
 "We aren't interested in anyone's trade secrets. But we are very interested in hiring talented people."
(The San Francisco Chronicle)
 "Work hard, have fun, make history."
(USA Today)

Amazon.com, Inc.
1200 12th Ave. South, Ste. 1200
Seattle, WA, 98144   Phone: 206-266-1000
Fax: 206-266-4206
 http://www.amazon.com
 
 
 

Copyright  2000  by  Group 17, IE 404, METUIndustrial Engineering Department, Ankara, TURKEY.