After these days of eating prawns, marzipan and drinking a few drinks, what better way to bring it down than going on sale!
This is the time of year when the offers encourage us to go from shop to shop in search of bargains, although there are also those who prefer to stay in their armchairs at home, shopping from their computers, and walking around finishing off the polvorones... which, as they say, the sooner they're gone the better.
Itseems that digital commerce, e-commerce , is gaining more and more strength every day, and of course, who is the king of Internet sales? Well, the "owner" of this kingdom is none other than AMAZON.
But what is behind Amazon and what is its history? It all started in 1994, when Jeff Bezos, founder and current CEO of Amazon, read an article about the imminent spread of the e-commerce market and decided he wanted to jump on that boat. He started by making a list of 20 products that could be sold through a website and among them, he chose the five that he thought would be the most promising: CDs, software, hardware, video cassettes and books.
Initially, books were his preferred product, so Bezos left his job in New York and went to Bellevue, Washington. Legend has it that it was on this long journey that he drew up his business plan. When he reached his destination, he set up a company dedicated to selling books over the Internetin a garage, a company called CADABRA.COM.
This name was not to Bezos' liking, he needed a more striking name for his SME, exotic and at the same time mysterious, as well as conveying a sense of power and starting with the vowel "A", as searches on the web go in alphabetical order. He turned to the dictionary and came up with the word AMAZON, a word that met all his needs, but also happened to be the name of the longest river in the world, the Amazon, it would be easy to remember.
After five years in operation, his marketing plan did not show a profit. That's what selling books in a garage was all about. The best thing was that during that time, two investors became interested in the idea and decided to invest. Even so, it took seven more years before they could see the first profits.
But what was Amazon's trick? Not only did they sell books, but they decided that people could give their opinions about them. That is how Amazon became an Internet phenomenon and managed to generate a large community of loyal users. As they saw how this grew, they started to add new catalogues. Four years later they opened in the UK and Germany.
The bad thing about companies is that as they go up, they go down. That is what happened to Amazon. It had to lay off more than 1,000 employees and face a major crisis, but well, you know what they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and that is what this company has shown. Little by little it recovered and grew again, increasing its catalogue and profits.
This growth is also due to Bezos' need to innovate continuously. A clear example of this was when, in 2007, he introduced the first e-bookreader in history. Since then, the world of reading has never been the same, partly thanks to Amazon.
So you know... don't underestimate garages, history has shown us that they can be the source of great things.
By the way, I hope that in the sales, and as they said in the Hunger Games movie: "Luck is always on your side".
