90 Amazon Company Facts: Know The Company Inside Out

If you've been on the internet even once in the last few years, it's highly likely that you've heard of Amazon.

Chances are that many of you have also ordered something from Amazon and had it delivered to your home or work. But have you ever wondered exactly how this company started?

If you've ever wanted to know about how this now mega public company started out, then we may just have the answers you've been looking for in this article. We've researched some amazing facts about the origin of this company, which was started by Jeff Bezos.

How it began, how it's going and just how did it become such a large, international phenomenon over a short few years. If you're interested in the answers to any of these then keep reading!

You'll also find out some mind-blowing fun facts about the company, its owner, and its employees. So get ready to learn everything about the Amazon company.

When did Amazon start?

Amazon was founded on Jul 5, 1994, in Washington, USA. Interestingly, its original name wasn't Amazon but 'Cadabra', which is a short form of the word 'Abracadabra'. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, started the company in his garage. In the beginning, it was only an online marketplace for books.

Amazon first went public in May 1997. In 1998, Amazon began to sell videos and music. This was also when the company first went international.

In the following year, Amazon started selling items that included games, video games, toys, software, and much more. Amazon Web Services, which provided internet-based statistics data to developers and marketers, launched in 2002.

In the following years, Amazon acquired a lot of other companies and made them subsidiaries of Amazon. In 2006, Amazon created fulfillment centers that were used to manage stock for the individuals and small companies that were selling their items via the company's website.

But in 2012, they bought Kiva Systems, which helped them automate their inventory system. They also bought the supermarket chain called Whole Foods Market in 2017. There are many companies that are now part of Amazon.

Amazon Prime membership is an affordable membership program that also opens up avenues to Amazon's other services. Amazon Prime subscribers enjoy a lot more comfort than normal Amazon account holders. Let's learn more about the founder of Amazon, and his inspirations for starting this company.

Who is Jeff Bezos?

As we already mentioned, Jeff Bezos is the founder of the company Amazon and also its former CEO.

Jeffrey Preston Bezos, better known as Jeff Bezos was born on Jan 12, 1964, in New Mexico. He was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen, and his parents were Jacklyn and Theodore Jorgensen.

He was born when both his parents were respectively 17 and 19 years old. Later, his mother divorced his father and married a man called Miguel Bezos (Mike). After their wedding, Mike adopted Jeffrey and that's how Jeff Bezos got his surname.

Jeffrey was a brilliant student and flew through school and college with no worries. He was a high school valedictorian and he graduated from Princeton University with a 4.2 GPA in 1986.

He got his degree in computer science and electrical engineering. He's most known as the founder of the company Amazon, which he founded in 1994 on a road trip from New York City to Seattle.

His creation is now the largest online sales company in the world. It's also the largest provider of virtual assistants in the world to people who are looking to market its products better.

The company that opened its virtual doors to the public in 1997, as an online bookstore has now become an international phenomenon and one of the Big Five companies of the USA. In Amazon's early days, nobody thought that Bezos's company would make it this far.

Amazon was originally going to be named Cadabra. But when the name didn't pan out, he came up with the name Amazon instead.

The reason he named the company Amazon is that it's Earth's biggest forest and river. Interestingly, Amazon first launched with the tagline 'Earth's biggest book store'.

Bezos was not only the founder of Amazon but also the CEO of the company until Jul 5, 2021, when Andy Jassy took over as president and CEO of the company. Jessy was the person who introduced Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2003, which offers cloud computing.

AWS also offers elastic compute cloud services that rent a computer for use.

Jeff Bezos is now the executive chairman of the company.

Not only is he one of the more successful businessmen in the world, but Bezos is also the wealthiest person on Earth according to Forbes' world's billionaires list of 2021. To put it simply, he is probably the most influential person on this planet and his story is quite inspirational, particularly for entrepreneurs.

The Inspiration Behind Starting Amazon

We've learned a bit about Jeff Bezos and his company's history. But what was the inspiration behind Bezos starting Amazon in the first place? Let's take a look.

Firstly, it's important to understand that Bezos was inspired to begin Amazon because of statistics. After graduating from Princeton University, Bezos accepted a job at a company called Fitel, which was a telecommunications start-up.

But this company failed so Bezos left in search of a better opportunity.

He then started working as a product manager at the company Banker's Trust. He quickly rose through the ranks and became the Vice President of the company, but he was always on the lookout for something better that could motivate and excite him.

He was looking for tech-related jobs and joined a hedge fund called D.E Shaw where he became Vice President in four years.

In 1994, Bezos was researching some new business ideas on the internet just at the time the internet was becoming popular. He came across a report using statistics that showed how big the internet would be, with web usage per year growing at 2,300%.

At that moment, Bezos realized the internet was a platform that could change the whole economic demographic of the world someday and he had to be a part of it.

He quit his job to pursue his dream of opening an online bookstore and moved to Seattle. His parents also believed in him and invested around $250,000 in his start-up business, and the rest is history.

Today, Amazon is the largest online store in the world.

The net worth of the company is $1 trillion and the founder is the richest man on earth. The company now has many subsidiaries that either Amazon started or acquired over the years, and it's likely that Amazon will only continue to grow even more.

Bezos's story is really inspirational as his brilliance and business sense were the things that helped him create a multi-billion dollar company. But he's also incredibly lucky to have had parents that believed in him so much.

His now ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, also helped him a lot. She also owns a 4% share of Amazon, which means her net worth is about $62.2 billion, making her the third-wealthiest woman in the USA (as of 2021).

Other Interesting Facts About Amazon

Now that we've covered most of the history behind Amazon, let's discover some fun facts about Amazon that will blow your mind.

Amazon employees in the USA get paid at least $18 per hour. This means that the minimum wage of Amazon employees is much higher than the required minimum wage of the USA.

The Amazon Affiliate Program, which is Amazon's own affiliate marketing program, is free to use for all bloggers and website owners. Owners and bloggers advertise Amazon products with links that people can use to buy products from Amazon. The Amazon associates earn referral fees through these links. Amazon Associates started in 1996.

Before we talked about how Amazon bought Kiva Systems, a robotics company. This company has developed innovative technology where smart machines can retrieve items from Amazon warehouses and get them to employees. There are presumably about 45,000 of these robots roaming Amazon warehouses today.

One of Amazon's unique customers is the CIA because Amazon secured a deal with the CIA that was worth $600 million for Cloud Computing Storage.

Amazon launched one of its most famous services, Amazon Prime, in 2005. By 2021, Amazon Prime had over 200 million subscriptions.

When Amazon first launched, it claimed to be the world's largest bookstore. In 1997, Barnes and Noble sued Amazon, saying that this was a false claim.

Amazon Japan has a very cute way of warming the hearts of its customers. The mascot of Amazon Japan, which is a sentient Amazon delivery box, is hugely popular amongst the people of Japan.

There's a rule that to understand the customer service process, all Amazon employees have to work at the customer service desk for at least two days every two years.

In August 2013, the Amazon website wasn't working for about 40 minutes. Though this might seem like a small span of time, this glitch in Amazon's site actually caused Amazon to lose $4.72 million per minute.

Kindle Fire is one product that Amazon launched. It was a low-cost tablet they introduced in 2011.

Amazon Flex is part of Amazon that provides a service called 'last-mile delivery'. The service uses multinational companies to deliver packages from regional centers to customers.

Amazon's headquarters is in Seattle, a city in Washington. Employees are allowed to bring in their dogs with them every day and there are about 7000 dogs in Amazon's headquarters that work with employees.

It's estimated that in 2016, Amazon accounted for a whopping 43% of all the online sales across the internet. In 2021, it was predicted that Amazon stock would rise by 17.65% in the future.

The first customer of Amazon was a friend of an Amazon team member called Shel Kaphan. The customer is a new Amazon software engineer named John Wainwright. He was the first non-employee to place an order for a book on Amazon. Wainwright actually got a building named after him.

To further enhance the company's reach, Amazon encourages teamwork and gives employees space to express their opinion and also give feedback to their managers.

As a cost-savings measure, Amazon first built the desks of their employees out of cheap doors.

What is Amazon best known for?

As we all already know, Amazon is famous around the world. Amazon owns a lot of different companies and provides a lot of services. But here are some things that the company is most known for.

One of the main reasons people use Amazon is to purchase items. But if you get a subscription to their Amazon Prime, you get access to their same-day service that guarantees you to get your Amazon packages within 24-48 hours. This is one reason the website's popularity is so large.

When Amazon started, it claimed to be Earth's largest bookstore. Amazon Kindle, which is their ebook service, became so popular that they were outselling most printed books by 2009. Even today, a lot of publishers are continuously getting revenue from Amazon sales. Amazon is not just a seller, but a major competitor in the book market.

Amazon also has a lot of subsidiaries that they either launched or acquired over time. Some of these companies function under Amazon, which is their parent company.

Twitch streaming services, which is one of the most famous streaming platforms, is also an Amazon brand. They also have a very famous downloadable media content part called Amazon Prime Videos. These services are very popular and that is one reason why Amazon has an annual net profit higher than most companies.

Every one of Amazon's unique users brings in about $189 to the company. So if you're an Amazon customer, now you know some of the most interesting facts about Amazon company!