Jeffrey Preston

Jeffrey Preston "Jeff” born January 12, 1964 is an American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Inc., an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products. Under his guidance, Amazon.com became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web and the model for Internet sales.

"Our vision is to be the world's most consumer-centric company, where customers can come to find anything they want to buy online."-Jeff Bezos

In 1994, Jeff Bezos was already what many would consider extremely successful. The youngest-ever senior vice president at Wall Street investment banker D.E. Shaw & Co., the 30-year-old Bezos was already making an estimated six-figure salary and was destined to rise even further in the company ranks. But Jeff had other plans. Fueled by a secret passion for the infant business of electronic retailing, Jeff dreamed of creating his own company in the vast, then virtually uncharted wilds of the World Wide Web. It was a risky move, but it quickly paid off.

Bezos first got the idea to start an Internet enterprise in 1994. While surfing the Internet in search of new ventures for D.E. Shaw & Co. to invest in, he came across the statistic that World Wide Web usage was growing by 2,300 percent a month. Bezos immediately recognized the expansive possibilities of selling online and began exploring the entrepreneurial possibilities of developing an Internet business.

For Bezos, Seattle was the ideal city for his new business. Not only was it home to a tremendous pool of high-tech talent, it was also in close proximity to Ingram Book Group's Oregon warehouse. While Mackenzie drove, Jeff spent the trip pecking out a business plan on a laptop computer and calling prospective investors on a cell phone. With $1 million raised from family and friends, Bezos rented a house in Seattle and set up his business in the garage.

 

For nearly a year, Bezos and a crew of five employees worked out of the garage, learning how to source books and setting up a computer system that would make Amazon.com easy to navigate. A true marketing visionary, in addition to creating a user-friendly interface that would streamline the "needle in a haystack" process that bookstore shopping often entails, Bezos wanted to establish a "virtual community" where visitors could "hang out." To achieve this goal, he and his team created a number of innovative programs, including one that would let customers add their own book reviews to the site and a feature that recommends books based on a customer's previous purchases.

In July 1995, Amazon.com opened its virtual doors, calling itself "Earth's Biggest Book Store," with more than 1 million titles to choose from. Fueled by word of mouth, or more accurately, word of e-mail, Amazon.com rocketed off the line like a nitro-burning dragster. Enraptured by the enormous selection of books, the superior customer service and the user-friendly design of the site, Internet users ecstatically plugged Amazon.com on Internet newsgroups and mailing lists.

The orders poured in, and by September 1996, Amazon.com had grown into a company of 100 employees and had racked up more than $15.7 million in sales. Three years later, those figures would rocket to more than 3,000 employees (including some in Britain and Germany) and more than $610 million in sales.

Amazon.com has continued to stay ahead of its closest competitor, boasting 85 percent of the Web book market to Barnes & Noble's 11 percent. But that may soon change. In fact, in the near future, they may no longer even be considered competitors. After his successful venture into the music market, Bezos set his sights on expanding Amazon.com into other markets. Shortly before the 1998 Christmas season, Bezos added a temporary gift section to Amazon.com, where customers could buy toys and games. He also began experimenting with "Shop the Web," a program giving Amazon.com a commission for directing its customers to other, noncompeting online retailers. In late January 1999, Amazon.com went after the $150 billion U.S. pharmacy market, buying a share of Drugstore.com, a company that sells everything from breath mints to Viagra online.

Sales: $610 Billion; Profits: $0

Perhaps one of the most remarkable things about Amazon.com is that even though its sales are growing at a rate of 3,000 percent annually and it is the country's third-largest bookseller, the company has yet to make a dime. In 1997, Amazon.com lost about $30 million, followed by another $1.25 million loss in 1998. But that doesn't bother Jeff Bezos. "To be profitable [now] would be would be a bad decision," he told PC Week. "This is a critical formative time if you believe in investing in the future." Bezos' plan is to forego profits, at least initially, in favor of establishing brand-name recognition. To this end, he has poured most of Amazon.com's revenue into marketing and promotion. "There are always three or four brands that matter," Bezos says. "With the lead we have today, we should be the No. 1 player."

 Just four years after Bezos created Amazon.com; the virtual bookstore became the template for how e-commerce businesses should be run, with sales of more than $610 million and more than 13 million customers worldwide.