We all know what Amazon is today, every single one of us has bought at least one thing on Amazon. It is the largest online retail comany in the world which made its founder, Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man. Yet I bet there are a few things you didn’t know about Amazon.
Amazon’s humble origins
Many people would find it shocking to find out that Amazon had very very small origins. The first book ever sold on Amazon was shipped directly from Jeff Bezos’ garage.
Amazon’s mandatory customer service
Every staff member at Amazon spends two days every two years at customer service, even the CEO! It’s all to help staff understand the customers’ demands.
An expensive 49 minutes…
In 2013 Amazon’s website went down for almost one hour, 49 minutes to be precise, and it lost 5,7 million dollars! This is to give you an idea of how apparently minimum shortcomings in the systems can cause huge damages.
Doordesk creativity
In Amazon’s early days since they were predicting to not make a profit for 5 years they had to cut expenses down, and desks were expensive. That’s why they started to make desk out of used doors, crazy considering we are talking about a multibillion dollars company, right? The practice is still promoted nowadays in the company and the more creative ones are awarded.
Amazon’s first crazy sales
Few people know this but when Amazn only sold books Bezos would have to source the item after the order came in. You don’t have to imagine Amazon with huge warehouses like today, which add up to more than 700 Madison Square Gardens in total. Back in the early days Bezos did not have enough space to store all the items he would have liked, so every time an order came in he had to look for the item else where, but it and then ship it to the customer.
What an amazing top 5 list! I bet you didn’t hear all of this on TV, is is always interesting to notice how even the biggest of all businesses began with so little.
Thank you for your time!