{"id":37906,"date":"2021-05-31T16:15:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T20:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=37906"},"modified":"2021-06-12T15:34:56","modified_gmt":"2021-06-12T19:34:56","slug":"amazon-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/amazon-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon&#8217;s Growth: Timeline Of Events From 1996-1999"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>How did Amazon grow so quickly after it&#8217;s conception in 1994? What happened in Amazon&#8217;s early days?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From 1996 to 1999, Amazon grew rapidly. Amazon went from strictly selling books to selling DVDs, music, and toys. But they weren&#8217;t the only large, online store\u2014eBay entered the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Continue on to learn about Amazon&#8217;s growth from a bookstore to an everything store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Amazon&#8217;s Growth<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Below is the timeline that tracks Amazon&#8217;s growth from 1996 to 1999:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amazon in 1996<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>June 1996: Amazon raises $8 million from Kleiner Perkins and John Doerr at a valuation of $60 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Kleiner wants to put a junior member on the board, but Bezos requires famous investor Doerr in that position as part of the deal. He believes Doerr\u2019s involvement is a public vote of confidence.<\/li><li>People observe that this money enables Bezos, making him think bigger and move faster than before.<strong> The motto is now \u201cGet Big Fast.\u201d He believes that they are always at threat of a larger player taking away what they have. He also believes the company that gets the lead now would keep it.<\/strong><\/li><li>Using this money, Amazon begins <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/executive-hiring\/\">hiring executives<\/a> from other companies, some away from tech companies like Microsoft.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Summer 1996<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Amazon launches its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/russell-brunson-affiliate-marketing\/\">affiliate marketing<\/a> program, giving an 8% commission for sales referrals.<\/li><li>They have 150 full-time employees, with fewer than 50 in the warehouse. They move offices again, and soon the warehouse expands to a 93,000 square-foot place.<\/li><li>Bezos wants Amazon to IPO (just 2 years after founding).<ul><li>This enables global branding that solidifies Amazon in customers\u2019 minds.<\/li><li>It would help compete with Barnes &amp; Noble, which has plans to go online.<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Fall 1996<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Amazon releases Similarities, recommendations for new books to buy. It\u2019s based on previous order history and groups similar users together.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amazon in 1997<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Early 1997<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Amazon had $16 million in sales in 1996, compared to $2 billion for Barnes &amp; Noble.<\/li><li>Amazon continues hiring executives from outside, threatening the status of some early employees like employee #1 Shel Kaphan (who is later indeed sidelined and leaves out of frustration).<\/li><li>Starbucks proposes a deal to put Amazon next to cash registers in exchange for 10% equity. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz argues Amazon needs a physical presence, but Bezos disagrees. Bezos was envisioning Starbucks having a much lower 1% equity. The deal doesn\u2019t happen.<\/li><li>Amazon continued the IPO process, choosing the bankers Deutsche Bank and Frank Quattrone (whose lead analyst was Bill Gurley, now a VC at Benchmark).<ul><li><strong>They boast of their \u201cnegative operating cycle,\u201d receiving money from customers immediately but paying their distributors every few months. In between, they have capital to fund expansion.<\/strong><\/li><li>They boast of a high revenue to fixed cost ratio, meaning a dollar invested in Amazon could provide much better returns than with any physical retailer.<\/li><li>Bezos keeps mum on some details, like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/easy-guide-to-ltv-and-cac-startups\/\">customer acquisition cost<\/a> and average purchase order, to prevent rivals from following their game plan.<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>May 15, 1997: Amazon IPOs, raising $54 million at a starting price of $18 per share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The widespread attention helps contribute to a growth of 900% in annual revenue.<\/li><li>Three days before the IPO, Barnes &amp; Noble sues Amazon, alleging false advertising for being \u201cEarth\u2019s Largest Bookstore.\u201d This has a Streisand effect, drawing even more attention to Amazon.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>End of 1997: Amazon has $148 million in revenue, up from $16 million in 1996.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amazon in 1998<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Spring 1998: Bezos considers it imperative to expand Amazon\u2019s brand beyond books to become <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-everything-store-amazon\/\">the Everything Store<\/a>. Amazon begins researching new product categories that have a high number of SKUs (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/what-makes-your-product-unique\/\">unique products<\/a>), are underrepresented in physical stores, and can be sent through the mail.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Music and DVDs were the first targets for Amazon to tackle. Amazon quickly surpasses older tech incumbents CDNow.com and Reel.com.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>May 1998: Amazon raises $326 million in junk-bonds to fund expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>June 1998: Amazon introduces Amazon Sales Rank, providing exact sales ranks for all books beyond the top 100 bestsellers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>This causes addictive rank checking for authors and publishers.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>1998: In the heat of the Internet boom, Amazon becomes a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/how-does-venture-capital-work\/\">venture capital<\/a> investor, investing tens of millions in Drugstore.com, Pets.com, Gear.com, Homegrocer.com, and Kozmo.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Summer 1998: Bezos meets with eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and CEO Meg Whitman.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>eBay is growing fast, from $47 million in revenue in 1998 to $225 million in 1999. It threatens to intercept Amazon as the Everything Store.<\/li><li>eBay\u2019s business model is strong, taking commissions for each sale but none of the hassle of inventory and sending packages.<strong> It\u2019s possible that eBay becomes so pervasive it\u2019d obviate fixed-price retailing.<\/strong><\/li><li>No partnership is made, but Bezos initiates a secret auctions project to replicate eBay in three months.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>December 1998: Henry Blodget at Oppenheimer predicts that Amazon\u2019s stock price would hit $400 per share in the next 12 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>It actually hits $400 just three weeks later.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>End of 1998: Amazon has $610 million in revenue, up from $148 million in 1997 and $16 million in 1996.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amazon in 1999<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Early 1999: After the success in music and movies, Bezos chooses to expand to toys and electronics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Toys prove fundamentally different from previous categories.<\/strong><ul><li>Unlike books and music, no third-party distributors could provide any item and take back unsold inventory. Instead, the toy makers carefully allocate supply to each retailer. For the first time, Amazon has to beg for supply.<\/li><li>Retailers have to predict in advance what the next holiday\u2019s top toys will be, since most sales occur within a 6-week period. If they\u2019re wrong, they\u2019ll end up with unsold inventory.<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Despite this, Bezos insists on spending $120 million on stocking every toy so customers would never end up disappointed.<\/li><li>Similarly, electronics proves more difficult; manufacturers view Internet sellers warily as likely to discount their products. Cut off, Amazon turns to gray-market secondary distributors.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>February 1999: Amazon raises $1.25 billion in convertible debt at 4.75% (cheap capital at the time).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>It uses capital for acquisitions (IMDB, BookPages, Exchange.com), building five new distribution centers, and partnering with portals like AOL, Yahoo, and MSN to become their exclusive booksellers. Normal deals of this nature usually involve giving the portals equity, but Bezos insists on paying cash.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>March 1999: Amazon Auctions (the eBay clone Bezos ordered in 1998) launches to limited success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>eBay has incredibly strong <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/network-effect\/\">network effects<\/a> that Amazon finds hard to penetrate, even despite Amazon offering lower listing fees and free fraud insurance.<\/li><li>Furthermore, the effort is not full-hearted within the company, having limited promotion &#8211; customers can reach Auctions only by clicking on a tab on the Amazon homepage.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How did Amazon grow so quickly after it&#8217;s conception in 1994? What happened in Amazon&#8217;s early days? From 1996 to 1999, Amazon grew rapidly. Amazon went from strictly selling books to selling DVDs, music, and toys. But they weren&#8217;t the only large, online store\u2014eBay entered the scene. Continue on to learn about Amazon&#8217;s growth from a bookstore to an everything store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":37919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,79,39],"tags":[376],"class_list":["post-37906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-entrepreneurship","category-history","tag-the-everything-store","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Amazon&#039;s Growth: Timeline Of Events From 1996-1999 - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here is a timeline of Amazon&#039;s growth from 1996 to 1999. In this time, they started their expansion from a bookstore to an everything store.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/amazon-growth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Amazon&#039;s Growth: Timeline Of Events From 1996-1999\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here is a timeline of Amazon&#039;s growth from 1996 to 1999. In this time, they started their expansion from a bookstore to an everything store.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/amazon-growth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-05-31T20:15:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-06-12T19:34:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/amazon-boxes.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"795\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"404\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Hannah Aster\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Hannah Aster\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/amazon-growth\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/amazon-growth\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Hannah Aster\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f39f52830e4f7039a16e45d12354542f\"},\"headline\":\"Amazon&#8217;s Growth: Timeline Of Events From 1996-1999\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-05-31T20:15:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-06-12T19:34:56+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/amazon-growth\/\"},\"wordCount\":1062,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/amazon-growth\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/amazon-boxes.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The Everything Store\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Business\",\"Entrepreneurship\",\"History\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/amazon-growth\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/amazon-growth\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/amazon-growth\/\",\"name\":\"Amazon's Growth: Timeline Of Events From 1996-1999 - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/amazon-growth\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/amazon-growth\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/amazon-boxes.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-05-31T20:15:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-06-12T19:34:56+00:00\",\"description\":\"Here is a timeline of Amazon's growth from 1996 to 1999. 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