November 26, 2002
Contact: Jay Chrepta
Harvard Business School
(617) 495-6155
Spend on Technology, Partner with Brand Names, and Put the Customer First
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BEZOS ON A ROLL -- Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos puts a Segway scooter through its paces during a visit to the Harvard Business School on Nov. 26, 2002.
Photo: Catherine Walsh |
BOSTON -- In the world of e-commerce, many empires and fortunes have shot skyward and flamed out since 1995 the year Amazon.com went online in 400-square-feet of rented space above a Colortile store in Bellevue, Washington.
Today, it’s the world’s largest online bookstore, with annual revenues totaling $4-billion, based largely on its expansion beyond books, tapes, and CDs to a variety of merchandise available through its partnership with established retailers as disparate as Target and Marshall Field’s.
Yet to Amazon’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, e-commerce today is still in the “Kitty Hawk” era. “We’re not at the DC-3 stage yet, and we’re certainly not at the jet-engine stage,” he told more than 500 students in a presentation sponsored by Harvard BusIness School’s MBA Career Services Office.
Praising the half-dozen or so HBS alums who helped propel Amazon during its early days from an odd curiosity to Internet powerhouse, Bezos was equally quick to credit the more than $1 billion invested in the company since 1997 for bread-and-butter, back-office resources like technological infrastructure and fulfillment centers.
According to Bezos, the end result of recruiting top talent and spending top dollar is to create a personalized experience for every customer who logs on to Amazon “to find and discover what customers want online,” he said.
What Bezos means, and what Amazon’s online experience attempts to do, is create something akin to a virtual store that stocks only your kind of stuff. Someone who purchased, say, Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits on Amazon would not only be directed to Joel’s other CDs, but to companion books and videos. Amazon’s inventory and user systems are so integrated that the Web site would also suggest CDs from Elton John, based on the buying habits of previous visitors who bought Billy Joel.
"We want to be Earth’s most customer-centric company," he said.
Dressed in the uniform of casual Fridays -- open-neck dress shirt, khakis, and navy blazer -- Bezos wowed his audience by rolling onto the stage of the Business School’s auditorium on a Segway scooter. Available exclusively on Amazon.com, the "human transport" device is going for $4,950. The first deliveries will be in March.