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Company Profile - Amazon.com

1200 12th Ave. South, Ste. 1200
Seattle, WA 98144

Phone: 206-266-1000
Fax: 206-266-1821
Website: www.amazon.com
Ticker Symbol: AMZN

Key Facts

Number 492 in the 2002 Fortune 500 list.
Has 31 million active customers who purchased from the store in 2002.
Is expected to have its first profitable year in 2003.
Key Financial Facts
2001 revenue: $3,122 million
1-yr. growth rate: 13 percent

Personnel Highlights
Number of employees: 7,800
1-yr. growth rate: -13 percent

Company Overview
Amazon.com, founded in 1994 but only open to customers since its website went live in July 1995, is the leading Internet retailer. The Seattle-based company, which began by selling books online, now also sells and distributes music, DVDs, videos, sheet music, electronics, software, toys, video games, tools and hardware, cosmetics, prescription drugs, and home furnishings as well as services such as film processing on its website.

Amazon.com, whose founder Jeff Bezos and his team debuted features such as one-click shopping, customer reviews, and e-mail order verification, went public in 1997. In that same year, it solidified relationships with AOL and Netscape. It continued to expand through 1998—moving beyond books and into music, video, toys, electronics as well as extending its network in Europe.

In 1999, Amazon.com went on a dot-com buying spree. Some of the dot coms snapped up by the company have since gone bust—Living.com and Pets.com to name a couple. In response to these failed investments, Amazon.com started looking at partnering instead with more stable bricks-and-mortar companies. The result: a ten-year deal with Toys R Us to create a cobranded toy and video game store.

Amazon.com reduced its workforce by 15 percent in 2001. By the end of that year, it had pulled through, posting fourth-quarter profits—a first for the company. Growth is still the name of the game for this online retailer; it launched clothing sales towards the end of 2002 so that consumers can buy from the Gap, Nordstrom’s, and Land’s End, all in one place. The move proved to be the most successful launch in the history of the store; sales went up by 28 percent to a record $1.43 billion for that quarter.

Major Line of Business :Internet & New Media, Retail

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