Amazon In 1995

robertbanking

Hello you wonderful and intelligent individuals that make up this forum. I sincerely hope things are going well for you.

I was doing some research into Amazon and in 1995, this was before the business went public, it managed to obtain over £500,000 in revenue in the first year of trading. It also managed to sell to all 50 states and over 45 countries. I have read books on Jeff Bezos on Amazon but i find the rapid scale of his business even at an early stage without funding impressive. Does anyone kindly have any thoughts please on how he would have scaled it so rapidly and for instance what would his marketing strategy have been please? If anyone kindly had any thoughts on this i would be forever grateful and thankful for your help with this.

Sending you lots of good wishes and i truly hope everything continues to go well for you. Very best wishes and take care. 

Sg28

I would guess that it took advantage of the rapid growth of the internet, being one of the first online retail shops. 

Lomcevak

robertbanking said:

i find the rapid scale of his business even at an early stage without funding impressive.

Bezos started Amazon with $250,000 from his parents, so he did have funding - plus he worked at a Wall Street firm before starting the company, and put his own money in too. 

The combination of the Amazon 'flywheel', focus on brand, and timing (growth of internet, as Sg28 says) drove a lot of early growth - the 'flywheel' was discussed in the book Good To Great (published in 2001), and was a core of the Amazon approach well before that.