Amazon has been considered as one of the largest bookstore and online store in the global market. Amazon.com has a simple mission statement that truly shows that the company is destined to be a big player in the market, “Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online” (Bezos, 2010). The company has millions of customers in over 150 nations. Amazon’s main website offers millions of DVDs, music, books and videos not to mention their products from household, electronics, apparel and clothes, cosmetics, drugs and other goods someone may seek to purchase online. Though the company has highs and lows, they are able to manage the companies and sustain their competitive advantage. A great deal of Amazon’s success can be attributed to one man, Jeff Bezos; the founder and visionary behind Amazon.com and a founding father in the field of ecommerce. Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque a relatively small town in New Mexico. “From an early age, Jeffrey displayed a striking mechanical aptitude.” (Henry, 2010) Even as a toddler, a young Jeff was able to dismantle his entire crib with a screwdriver, which in itself is impressive. When he was a teenager his family packed all their belongings and left New Mexico for Miami, Florida. During his high school days in Miami, Bezo obtained his love for computers and electronic components. Bezos finished as the valedictorian of his class and proceeded to enroll at the prestigious Princeton University. Bezos originally planned to study physics, but early into his freshmen year his love of computers and electronics got the better of him and he switched his major. Bezos ended up graduating from Princeton University with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. Despite all his collegiate accolades to a successful Wall Street career Bezos wouldn't be a household name, if not for in 1994, when he hadn't noticed the Internet's potential for commerce and abandoned a well-paying job at the investment firm D. E. Shaw, to return to the garage and launch Amazon. A few years after this graduation Bezos typed a business plan. He decided that the company would be called Amazon. The websites name is a reference to the seemingly endless South American river with its numberless branches, because Amazon.com would be website with endless possibilities and he was to market it that way to his potential business partners.
After the formation of the Amazon business plan Bezos and his partner Mackenzie set up a small location in a two-bedroom house, with extension cords running to the garage to allow them to run the website. Using some cheap microcenters Jeff had picked up from Home Depot, the Amazon website was finally able to be tested. When the testing of site was up and running, Jeff asked 300 friends to help him test out his website. These 300 people were the first market testers of Amazon and the feedback they provided made Amazon grow to what it has become. The code that Bezos had written with his knowledge of computer science worked seamlessly across different computer platforms. “On July 16, 1995, Bezos opened his site to the world, and told his 300 beta testers to spread the word. In 30 days, with no press, Amazon had sold books in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries.” (Spiro, 2005) By September of 1995 Amazon has receiving $20,000 a week in sales, which at the time was significant for a new online business. Bezos and his team continued improving the Amazon over the few months and years. Bezos and his team introduced such unheard-of features as one-click shopping, customer reviews, and e-mail order verification, which are all still used to this day. Amazon grew faster than Bezos or anyone else involved in the situation could have ever imagined. When the company went public in 1997, many skeptics wondered if an Internet-based bookseller like Amazon was could maintain its position