Amazon then and now: from tiny garage to tech titan

From humble beginnings to global empire

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Few companies have had such a profound impact on the world as Amazon in recent decades – for better or worse – and its success has made its founder one of the richest men in the world.

As the tech giant turns 30, read on as we chart its major milestones from a start-up founded in a garage to a company valued at over $1.9 trillion (£1.5tn).

All dollar amounts in US dollars

Jeff Bezos' bookstore dream

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A far cry from the glossy Silicon Valley giant it's become, Amazon started life when Jeff Bezos, a former hedge fund manager, quit his job on Wall Street in 1994 with the aim of taking advantage of the internet revolution by setting up his own online bookstore.

Along with then-wife MacKenzie Scott, he founded the company in the garage of a rented house in Bellevue, Washington.

The future billionaire is pictured here at the tender age of three in 1967.

Name and site launch

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Amazon was originally called Cadabra, as in "Abracadabra", but the name was scrapped after several people misheard it as "cadaver". Other proposed names included MakeItSo.com (after Captain Picard's frequent command in Star Trek), Awake.com, Browse.com, Bookmall.com and Relentless.com.

In the end, Bezos chose Amazon to suggest scale (Amazon launched with the tagline "Earth's biggest book store"), and because website listings at the time were alphabetical. The site was officially launched on 16 July 1995.

First sale

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However, before it went live, the website went through almost a year of testing.

Originally, it only sold books and the first official purchase on Amazon.com, that is one not made by an employee during the testing phase, was Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.

Free publicity from Yahoo!

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Just three days after launch, Bezos received an email from Jerry Yang (pictured right), one of the founders of Yahoo!, asking if Amazon would like to be featured on Yahoo!'s What's Cool page.

Bezos said yes, Yahoo! listed the site on their page, and orders skyrocketed. By the end of its first week, Amazon had taken in over $12,000 worth of orders, the equivalent of almost $25,000 (£19.3k) in today's money.

Worldwide sales start to come in

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During Amazon’s first month in business, it received orders from customers in 45 countries worldwide. The office installed a bell that rang every time someone made a purchase. Within a few weeks, sales were happening so frequently that they had to switch it off.

To keep overheads low, the office desks were made from cheap doors, with sawn-off two-by-fours for legs (pictured). The company still reportedly hands out a Door Desk Award to employees who implement thrifty ideas.

Clash with traditional booksellers

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In the company’s first year, Bezos cheekily hired mobile billboards to drive by Barnes & Noble bookstores displaying the question "Can't find that book you wanted?" along with Amazon's website address.

This wasn't the start-up's only run-in with the bookseller. In 1997, Barnes & Noble sued Amazon, alleging that "Earth’s Largest Bookstore" was a false claim. It eventually settled out of court with Amazon continuing to use its slogan.

Branching out

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Although Amazon started out selling just books, Bezos always had plans to expand its offering.

In 1998 Bezos diversified the company's product range to include physical formats of music and movies. By the end of the year, it was selling an even larger range of consumer goods, including power tools and soft toys if this picture is anything to go by.

Amazon goes public

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Three years after founding the company, Bezos took Amazon.com public with an initial public offering (IPO).

Three million shares were offered at an initial price of $18 a share. Amazon's share price at the time of writing? A cool $182 (£140).

Opening of first fulfilment centres

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In the early days of Amazon, its offices and warehouses were one and the same thing. But as the company grew, it began to open dedicated warehouses, which it called fulfilment centres. The first of these were located in Seattle, Washington and New Castle, Delaware and opened in 1997.

Today there are more than 175 fulfilment centres across the world. When Amazon purchased robot manufacturer Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012, the equivalent of $1.1 billion (£848m) in today's money, its warehouses gained a new type of worker: robots. Pictured here, these small robotic devices lift up shelving units full of products, moving via QR codes on the floor which they scan using cameras.

 

Crazy Christmas

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In 1998 the company was dramatically understaffed for the Christmas holiday season rush. It’s reported that every employee had to take a graveyard shift in the fulfilment centres to meet demand, with many bringing their friends and family in to help too.

To prevent this from happening again, Amazon now hires a record amount of staff over the holiday season. In 2023, for example, it created around 250,000 seasonal positions across its US network of fulfilment and sorting centres.

First profits finally

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Despite big sales and a healthy customer base, it took Amazon almost seven years to start making any real money.

It was January 2002 before it reported its first profitable quarter, making a modest $5 million, the equivalent of around $8.7 million (£6.7m) in today's money.

High-profile acquisitions

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Amazon has purchased several up-and-coming companies over the years, starting with the popular online movie database IMDB in 1998 so it could exclusively link to products on Amazon.

Other purchases since then include the digital audio library Audible, bought in 2008 to incorporate into the Kindle, and the live streaming platform Twitch in 2014.

Move into fashion

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You might be surprised to learn that Amazon became the largest clothing retailer in the US in 2020, according to estimates by Wells Fargo – although the company hasn't disclosed its fashion sales figures.

Its acquisitions of online fashion company Shopbop in 2006 and online shoe store Zappos in 2009, along with its own fashion brand Find, have helped it to gain a foothold in the fashion marketplace.

Quicker deliveries with Prime

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After launching the premium service Amazon Prime in 2005, customers had the option of two-day delivery for around a million items. In 2014 Amazon went one better and launched same-day Prime service in Manhattan, New York. The company claims one customer got their item – an Easy-Bake Oven – in a record 23 minutes.

By this point, Bezos (pictured here with then-wife MacKenzie) had an estimated net worth in the region of $5 billion, the equivalent of $8 billion (£6.2bn) in today's money.

Changing the way we read...

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Not content with changing the way we buy books, in November 2007 Amazon launched the Kindle e-reader, allowing people to download books and read them all on one compact device. Initially on sale for $400 (equivalent to $600 or £462 today), some reviewers criticised its high price, although that didn't stop it from selling out in a reported five and a half hours.

The Kindle has undergone a transformation over the past 17 years, doing away with the keyboard from earlier models and opting for a touchscreen, launching a frontlight feature, and improving the resolution of the display. Today, Kindle prices start at $99 (£76).

...and the way we scroll

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In September 2011, Amazon launched its first ever tablet: the Amazon Kindle Fire. Positioning itself as a competitor to Apple's iPad, the first model was completely touch-screen and retailed at $200 ($279/£215 in 2024 money). Although Amazon didn't share its sales figures, a Barclays analyst predicted 5.5 million of the devices were sold in the final quarter of 2011.

In 2014, Amazon launched the Fire Stick, a device that plugs into your TV and allows users to stream content. It was designed to compete with Google's Chromecast and Apple's Apple TV. By the end of 2020, Amazon announced its Fire TV platform had reached 50 million active monthly users. By 2022, it had sold 150 million Fire TV devices.

But Bezos couldn't crack the smartphone market

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Despite Amazon's tech success, its attempt to release a smartphone was disastrous. In July 2014 the company launched the Amazon Fire phone, originally priced at $199 ($264/£203 in today's money) with a two-year contract. Yet within three months, AT&T dropped the price to just 99 cents with a two-year contract.

Three months later, Amazon took a $170 million ($226m/£174m) write-down charge to wipe out the lost value of unsold Fire phones. The phone was criticised for its lack of major apps and the way it hooked users directly into Amazon's shopping engine. After just over a year, Amazon stopped selling the Fire phone.

TV and film player

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Amazon is challenging Netflix in the battle for video streaming subscribers with its Amazon Prime Video service. Launched in the US in 2006 as Amazon Unbox, it expanded in the 2010s, reaching the UK, Germany, and Austria in 2014. In fact, after live-streaming Premier League football matches it became the fastest-growing streaming service in the UK in 2020.

Amazon was predicted to spend around $7 billion on creating original content that year and this figure has since ballooned. In 2023, the company spent just under $19 billion (£14.6bn) on creating content and also had the most expensive TV show ever in its stable in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (pictured).

Home help

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Amazon launched its first voice assistant device, the Amazon Echo speaker, which uses the Alexa voice assistant, in November 2014. Despite some criticism from reviewers, people snapped it up, and in January 2019 it was announced that more than 100 million Alexa-compatible devices had been sold.

Today, the company is estimated to have sold more than 500 million of the devices worldwide.

Fresh groceries

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Amazon Fresh, a grocery delivery service, launched in the retailer’s hometown of Seattle in 2007. Prime members could browse fresh produce, meat, seafood, and household essentials and have products delivered within a two-hour delivery slot.

The service later expanded to New York in 2014, the UK in 2016 and eventually across Europe. However, the service wasn't without its problems and in 2020 the firm announced it would use the name Amazon Fresh for its new chain of grocery stores. By 2022, there were 38 stores across America and 19 in London.

Whole Foods takeover

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In 2017, Amazon made its biggest purchase to date when it bought Whole Foods for $13.7 billion ($17.6bn/£13.6bn today), with the aim of selling fresh produce at cheaper prices. The e-commerce giant pushed ahead with changes to the retailer, bringing down the price of some products and introducing the Amazon Echo to shelves.

However, the move came with criticism that Whole Foods had sold out to "one of the most disliked companies in retail".

First checkout-free store

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In January 2018 Amazon opened its first checkout-free Amazon Go grocery store in Seattle, a "Just Walk Out" store that meant customers didn't have to queue for a cashier. The stores, which use surveillance cameras and sensors and weights connected to a virtual cart in the Amazon Go app, aim to revolutionise the way we shop.

The technology is used in Amazon Fresh stores too, and has sparked controversy for its perceived "Big Brother" qualities.

Since opening the first store, Amazon has also started selling the Just Walk Out technology to other companies. Various venues across the US, UK, Australia, and Canada use it today.

Biometric payments

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Amazon wants to go one step further to improve the Just Walk Out experience. In September 2020, it unveiled plans for a biometric payment method. A new form of contactless payment, the system scans each customer’s palm, which is linked to their credit or debit card.

Because of the intricacy of the palm's vein patterns, biometric payment is highly resistant to forgery, in theory making it a much safer method than cards or cash. The retailer also highlighted the method's value for entering places like offices and ticketed events.

Now known as Amazon One, the technology is increasingly being used in retail outlets but has been questioned by digital security experts.

Investing in driverless technology

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Also in 2020, Amazon bought self-driving car start-up Zoox in a deal thought to be worth the equivalent in today's money of $1.5 billion (£1.2bn). The firm has been developing electric and driverless robotaxis and has tested the technology in several states across America.

However, earlier this year the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched an investigation after two collisions between motorbikes and Zoox vehicles.

Sales continue to shatter records

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Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, Amazon's annual Prime Day – a 48-hour shopping event – was postponed from July 2020 to October. However, COVID-19 didn't impact sales. Amazon sold a then-record $10.4 billion (£8bn) worth of goods, 45.2% higher than 2019's extravaganza, according to Digital Commerce 360's analysis.

This number has continued to climb; in 2023, global Amazon Prime Day sales hit $12.9 billion (£9.9bn).

Over 200 million Prime members

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Amazon currently has over 200 million paying Prime members worldwide. According to Statista, around 71% of American Amazon shoppers are Prime customers, despite the implementation of price hikes in 2022.

A monthly prime membership currently costs $14.99 in the US and £8.99 in the UK.

First person to be worth over $200 billion

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In 2021, Bezos stood down as Amazon CEO but remains its executive chairman today. His net worth has skyrocketed in recent years, thanks to heightened demand for Amazon products and services and soaring stock prices.

In August 2020, he became the first person in the world to have a net worth above $200 billion (£153bn), according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. At the time of writing, he's worth a mammoth $201 billion (£155bn), according to Forbes.

Trillion-dollar valuation

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Amazon made headlines in February 2020 when it gained a $1 trillion (£770bn) valuation. It was the fourth company in the world to do so: Apple hit the landmark in August 2018 while Microsoft reached it in 2019 and Alphabet, Google's parent company, did so in January 2020.

Amazon has since gone from strength to strength; the company didn't just weather the pandemic but flourished, and with bolstered investment into its Prime Video content and other services, it's no surprise it's currently valued at a whopping $1.9 trillion (£1.5tn).

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Updated by Alice Cattley