One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise
of Amazon.com
By Richard L Brandt
£14.99 PORTFOLIO PENGUIN
In 1998,when online bookseller Amazon was four years old, its founder Jeff Bezos said: "Amazon.com is not going to put bookstores out of business. Barnes & Noble is opening a new superstore every four days. Borders is opening
a new superstore every nine days."
He was, of course, being a trifle disingenuous. Earlier this year Borders filed for bankruptcy, while Barnes & Noble racked up $107m of losses in
the first nine months of 2010.
And it's clear from Richard L Brandt's painstakingly researched book that it was Bezos who wielded the dagger. While his bricks and mortar rivals had market caps of $852m and $65m at the end of 2010, Amazon was worth a staggering $81bn.
All this was all achieved through
a mix of attention to detail and calculated ruthlessness. When one elderly customer emailed to say she loved ordering books online but had to wait for her nephew to come over to tear open the cardboard packaging, Bezos had it redesigned. When Bezos insisted on one-click ordering, he had the process patented to the fury of rivals.
Indeed, whether it's kick-starting the e-book revolution via the Kindle or promising to introduce purchasing via computer-detected body movements, Amazon continues to lead the way.
blog comments powered by
