It’s Amazon Prime Day – Here Are 12 Interesting Amazon Facts
July 12 is Amazon Prime day in several countries across the globe. As Prime members and other curious online shoppers hit the site to check out the deals, here’s 12 interesting Amazon facts:
- Founded in 1994 as an online book store
- Amazon has a building named after its first customer, John Wainwright, who on April 3, 1995 purchased Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought by Douglas Hofstadter for $27.95 (News18.com, 2015)
- Bezos originally wanted to call his company Cadabra (as in ‘Abracadabra,’) but scrapped the idea after someone misheard the moniker as ‘cadaver’ (Entrepreneur, 2016)
- Other company names that were explored included MakeItSo.com (after Captain Picard’s command in Star Trek), Bookmall.com, Awake.com, Browse.com, and Relentless.com. If you type relentless.com into a web browser it will redirect you to Amazon (msn.com, 2015)
- At the end of 2015, there were more than 304 million active customer accounts worldwide. (Statistics and facts about Amazon. Statstica 2015)
- There was 171.83 million unique monthly visitors as of the end of 2015 (Statistics and facts about Amazon. Statstica 2015)
- 89% of Million Dollar sellers on Amazon use software to manage inventory, orders, shipping, listing, repricing and more (Webretailer Survey Results, 2016)
- It delivered more than 1 billion items from Amazon warehouses by independent sellers worldwide in 2015 (Wall Street Journal Blog, 2016)
- Cyber Monday was the best selling day for sellers with customers ordering 23 million items in that one day alone (Retail Dive, 2016)
- The domain name amazon.com was registered on November 1, 1994 (News18.com, 2015)
- Amazon reported its first profitable quarter of $5 million only in January 2002, almost seven years after it launched (News18.com, 2015)
- Amazon’s current logo was designed to depict a smile that goes from A to Z (msn.com, 2015)
This is only the second Amazon Prime day and these interesting Amazon facts show how far a company can come in 21 years. Like many other entrepreneurs, it can take several years to reach a profitable position. Keep understanding your customers as their needs will change, offer the products they want and need, engage with them to learn more and you’ll continue to build your successful online company.
July 12, 2016