Company Analysis: Team C2X
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Company Analysis: Team C2X History The company was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos called his "regret minimization framework", which he described as his effort to fend off regret for not staking a claim in the Internet gold rush. The company began as an offline bookstore. While the largest brick-and-mortar bookstores and mail-order catalogs might offer 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could sell far more. Bezos wanted a name for his company that began with "A" so that it would appear early in alphabetic order. He began looking through the dictionary and settled on "Amazon" because it was a place that was "exotic and different" and it was the river he considered the biggest in the world, as he hoped his company would be. Since 2000, Amazon's logotype is an arrow leading from A to Z, representing that they carry every product from A to Z. Amazon's initial business plan was unusual. The company did not expect a profit for four to five years. Its "slow" growth provoked stockholder complaints that the company was not reaching profitability fast enough. When the dot-com bubble burst, and many e-companies went out of business, Amazon persevered, and finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001: $5 million or 1¢ per share, on revenues of more than $1 billion. The profit, although it was modest, served to demonstrate that the business model could be profitable. In 1999, Time magazine named Bezos the Person of the Year, recognizing the company's success in popularizing online shopping. Major Acquisitions 1998: PlanetAll, a reminder service based in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Junglee, an XML-based data mining startup based in Sunnyvale; Bookpages.co.uk, a UK online book retailer, which became Amazon UK on October 15, 1998. 1999: Internet Movie Database (IMDb); Alexa Internet, Accept.com, and Exchange.com 2003: Online music retailer CD Now. By 2011, the web site cdnow.com was defunct and in use by a different company. 2004: Joyo.com, a Chinese e-commerce website. 2005: BookSurge, a print on demand company, and Mobipocket.com, an eBook software company. CreateSpace.com (formerly CustomFlix), a distributor of on- demand DVDs, based in Scotts Valley, California. CreateSpace has since expanded to include on-demand books, CDs, and video. 2006: Shopbop, a retailer of designer clothing and accessories for women, based in Madison, Wisconsin. 2007: dpreview.com, a digital photography review website based in London; Brilliance Audio, the largest independent publisher of audiobooks in the United States. 2008: Audible.com; Fabric.com; Box Office Mojo; AbeBooks; Shelfari; (including a 40% stake in LibraryThing and whole ownership of BookFinder.com, Gojaba.com, and FillZ); Reflexive Entertainment, a casual video game development company. 2009: Zappos, an online shoe and apparel retailer Lexcycle, SnapTell, an image matching startup.[ 2010: Touchco., Woot, Quidsi, BuyVIP, Amie Street. 2011: Lovefilm, The Book Depository, Pushbutton 2012: Kiva Systems Investment 2008: Engine Yard, a Ruby-on-Rails platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company. 2010: LivingSocial, a local deal site. Subsidiaries 2004: A9.com, a company focused on researching and building innovative technology.] 2004: Lab126, developers of integrated consumer electronics such as the Kindle. 2007: Endless.com, an e-commerce brand focusing on shoes. 2007: Brilliance Audio, the largest independent audio book producer in the U.S. Merchant partnerships Until June 30, 2006, typing ToysRUs.com into a browser would bring up Amazon.com's "Toys & Games" tab; however, this relationship was terminated due to a lawsuit. Amazon also hosted and managed the website for Borders bookstores but this ceased in 2008. From 2001 until August 2011, Amazon hosted the retail website for Target. Benefit Cosmetics, another merchant partner of Amazon, has also launched a major E-Commerce platform of their own based on Hybris and arvato systems NA, in the US, EU and China. Amazon.com operates retail web sites for Sears Canada, bebe Stores, Timex, Marks & Spencer, Mothercare, and Lacoste. For a growing number of enterprise clients, currently including the UK merchants Marks & Spencer, Benefit Cosmetics' UK entity, edeals.com, and Mothercare, Amazon provides a unified multichannel platform where a customer can seamlessly interact with some people that they call the retail website, standalone in-store terminals, or phone-based customer service agents. Amazon Web Services also powers AOL's Shop@AOL. On October 18, 2011, Amazon.com announced a partnership with DC Comics for the exclusive digital rights to many popular comics, including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Sandman, and Watchmen. The partnership has caused well-known bookstores like Barnes & Noble to remove these titles from their shelves. These titles will be available for purchase exclusively through Amazon's new Kindle Fire tablet. Recent News Many Booksellers Shunning Amazon Amazon inspires anxiety just about everywhere, but its publishing arm is getting pushback from all sorts of booksellers, who are scorning the imprint’s most prominent title, Timothy Ferriss’s “The 4-Hour Chef.” The book is coming out just before Thanksgiving 2012 into a fragmented book-selling landscape that Amazon has done much to create but that eludes its control. Barnes & Noble, struggling to remain relevant in Amazon’s shadow, has been emphatic that it will not carry its competitor’s books. Other large physical and digital stores seem to be uninterested or even opposed to the book. Many independent stores feel betrayed by Mr. Ferriss, whom they had championed. They will do nothing to help him if it involves helping a company they feel is hellbent on their destruction. Only a few years ago, culture was delivered in discrete doses. “The 4-Hour Chef” would have been in the chain bookstores by the stacks and in independents by the handful. You wanted a book, you went to the bookstore. Simple. Now the technology overlords — Amazon, Google and Apple — are competing among themselves and with other players to control how the culture is consumed. Amazon’s Kindle Fire was introduced last year to carve out some space from Apple’s iPad; since then, Google and Microsoft have brought out their own tablets. Amazon Will Collect Sales Tax to Expand Boldly Amazon is building massive distribution centers near several major cities. This multibillion- dollar building frenzy means Amazon is about to lose perhaps its biggest competitive edge — that it does not charge sales tax on the vast majority of its customers, reports David Streitfeld of The New York Times. After negotiations with lawmakers, the company is beginning to collect taxes in California, Texas, Pennsylvania and other states. But Amazon hopes that the warehouses will allow it to provide better service, giving it the ability to upend the retailing industry in an entirely new way. Amazon will soon be able to cut as much as a day off its two-day shipping times, said Jeff Bezos, its chief executive, in an interview. This will put the much-rumored same-day delivery — the elusive aspiration of every online merchant — potentially within reach in some metropolitan areas. “We want fast delivery,” Mr. Bezos said. At a minimum, “we can work on making it the next day.” Amazon’s delivery of everyday objects needs to be fast enough and cheap enough to wean customers from their local stores. Yet it also must be economically feasible for the retailer, which is investing so heavily in the warehouses that it is barely profitable. If Amazon can deliver on its ambitions, said Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at the research firm Forrester, “it will be the dominant retailer in the decade to come.” It starts collecting sales tax in California on Saturday. Amazon started collecting taxes in Texas this summer, and in Pennsylvania on Sept. 1. New Jersey’s turn will come next summer, and several other states over the next two years. The company seems to be surrendering on the tax issue mostly in those states where it sees strategic value in new warehouses. Company officials say they hope to see a national sales tax law in place that will supersede state laws. Wal-Mart Deletes the Kindle Wal-Mart Stores, the nation’s largest retailer, said Thursday that it was dropping Amazon’s Kindle tablets and e-readers, a sign of how seriously it views Amazon as a competitor in the consumer goods market, report Stephanie Clifford and Julie Bosman on Friday in The New York Times. Target has already stopped selling Kindles, though other stores, including Best Buy, Staples and Office Depot, said Thursday that they would continue to carry the devices. Wal-Mart did not say why it was discontinuing its Kindle sales, but analysts said physical retailers have been worried about customers who browse in stores and then buy from online competitors instead. The newer Kindles are particularly worrisome to retailers because they can be used for e-books, movies, games and potentially anything Amazon sells, thanks to a built-in Web browser. Colin Gillis, a technology analyst for BGC Financial, told The Times that by selling Kindles, Wal-Mart was giving customers a reason to step into the Amazon ecosystem. At the same time, analysts said, the Kindle line was only marginally profitable for retailers. Brands owned by Amazon.com What’s common between IMDB, Zappos, Shelfari and Audible.com? Well they aren’t just widely recognized brands but they all have a common owner – Amazon.com. Let’s also add Junglee, Amazon Store in India, to this list. Amazon is more than just an online shopping store now. They offer “infrastructure as as service”, “unlimited storage on demand” (Amazon S3) and other web services that power other popular online businesses like Zynga, Netflix, Foursquare and Dropbox.