The year was 1997 and Amazon was losing more money than selling the books it was so proud of having. However, with courage that would impressive even the fiercest lion, Jeff Bezos decided the best way to counter this backlash was by going public in the same year when profits were at an all time low. Going public on Nasdaq with $ 18 per share, Amazon proved everyone wrong. From the time of the IPO to present day, Amazon has grown so much that if you invested $ 10,000 in a share in 1997, your shares would currently stand at a value of $ 4.8 million! Here’s taking a look at the impressive growth of Amazon through the years.

1997 to 2000

The moment Amazon.com went public, it was like a brand new revolution hit the internet.

• With close to 80K regular users, close to $ 2.4 billion was spent on online shopping and on the Amazon website.
• At $ 18 per share, the valuation of this e commerce platform stood at $ 438 million, giving it hopes of becoming a profitable company despite the multiple losses.
• Finally realising the importance of branching out into different sectors, Amazon decided to expand the number of products available from one to 17, with 143 subcategories a year after it goes public.
• To increase the user experience, Amazon introduced the one click checkout and promptly patents it, realising no one else had that feature at that point.
• By the year 2000, Amazon’s share value had started climbing up steadily and by the time the dot com bust was in the offing, the share value stood at $ 91 per share.
• While several e commerce websites and other startups plummeted into destruction, Amazon stood on semi solid ground.
• Despite the steep decline of its share value (from $ 91 to $ 15,) Amazon decided to launch Marketplace, a feature which not only let the e commerce platform survive the bad times, but also allowed third party users.
• Increasing the users from 4 million to 5.5 million, this extremely smart move not only ensured the survival of Amazon during the bad times, but also ensured its ride through to success.

2000 to 2006 

From the increase in the number of users to the introduction of new features, Amazon saw a massive surge in the response from people.

• Amazon broke the internet with Free Super Saving Shipping for orders worth over $ 99, providing online shoppers with incentives to buy more, thereby increasing their revenue.
• Looking at the success the Free Super Saving Shipping service garnered, Amazon introduced the first Cyber Monday sale! Over the years, this sale became so popular, it accounted for $ 3.45 billion in sales, with the day it was launched earning the most revenue in 2016.
• Entering into new services and products, Amazon launched Amazon Prime, a one day delivery guarantee for people with the Prime membership. So well received was this service, it inspired a similar launch by other e commerce platforms like eBay and Alibaba.
• The year 2006 was quite a revolutionary year for Amazon, with the e commerce platform launching Fulfillment, a service for third party users. Now, this particular feature is available in over 100 countries!

2006 to present 

The year 2006 saw an increase in the kind of people buying phones online, with Amazon being one of the first platforms that started selling the iPhone on the internet. With over 80 % of the people shopping for everything from books to electronic gadgets on the internet, it comes as no surprise that Amazon is one of the most famous and revenue generating platform in the world. In fact, for the last couple of years, Jeff Bezos has been so wealthy, he has held the position of being one of the richest people for the last few years in a row!