Amazon opened a direct selling operations center in Brazil in January, which is expected to increase its popularity in the country. However, there is a lot of information about “the e-commerce giant” that Brazilians don’t know about. The company now sells a wide variety of products, but at the beginning its business was limited to selling books online. Founded in July 1994, Amazon started as a startup managed from second-hand computers in the garage of engineer Jeff Bezos, the company’s current CEO.
READ: Amazon Brasil delivers within 2 days; know how to buy
The company became one of the first in the industry to gain relevance in the e-commerce market. Over the course of more than 20 years, the Kindle owner survived the bubble of the 2000s and transformed herself into a global company. In the following list, learn six curious facts about Amazon.
In just three years, Amazon’s online store went from selling books to selling everything – Photo: Luciana Maline / dnetc
Want to buy cell phones, TV and other discounted products? Discover Compare dnetc
E-commerce was initially called “Cadabra.Inc”. The idea of ​​Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was to make a reference to the magic word «Abracadabra», but his first lawyer warned him that the association might not sound so clear. In addition, some people heard “Corpse” when contacting the store over the phone.
Finding it difficult to name his brand, the CEO decided to look for inspiration in the dictionary, starting with the letter A. At the time, the sites were listed in alphabetical order, so ensuring a name with the first letter of the alphabet was strategic. When he came across the word “Amazon” (Amazonas, in Portuguese), he decided that nothing could be better than naming what would become the largest bookshop in the world inspired by the largest river in the world.
Initially, the Amazon logo carried an explicit reference to the origin of the brand name. The art featured a capital A cut by the abstract design of a river. This design remained until 2000, when the company adopted the current logo, which bears the inscription Amazon.com above a curved orange arrow, which links the letter A to the letter Z.
Amazon logo brings reference to the variety of products offered and the pleasure of serving the customer – Photo: Disclosure / Amazon
The arrowhead helps to create the image of a dimpled smile, which, according to the design agency that designed the logo, says «we are happy to deliver anything, anywhere». The connection from letter A to letter Z it is also purposeful, showing that Amazon offers anything that customers might be looking for online.
3. First book sold
Famous for its pioneering spirit in the literary segment of e-commerce, Amazon sold its first book in 1995, from Jeff Bezos’s garage in Seattle. The work was “Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought”.
In July 2013, the Amazon website faced a technical problem and was down for exactly 49 minutes. Although customers did not even wait an hour to return to browse and shop, for the store the rapid failure cost about US $ 5.7 million (R $ 21.3 million, in direct conversion).
Amazon site was down for less than an hour in 2013 and generated a loss of US $ 5.7 million – Photo: Melissa Cruz / dnetc
To get an idea of ​​how the saying «time is money» applies to the site, in 2012 Amazon’s net sales had reached $ 61.09 billion (R $ 227.9 billion, in direct conversion), which totals an average of US $ 116,229.07 (R $ 433,534.43, in direct conversion) in sales every minute. The e-commerce giant’s profit continues to grow: in the last quarter of 2018, Amazon’s net sales closed at $ 72.4 billion (R $ 270.05 billion, in direct conversion).
A lot of people don’t know, but Amazon has a program of donations to charities. AmazonSmile allocates 0.5% of the value of customers’ purchases to an entity of their own choosing. To contribute to the initiative, just start browsing at smile.amazon.com and continue shopping normally.
Participation in AmazonSmile does not require the creation of a separate account and does not incur extra costs for the customer. Currently, about 1.5 million public charities participate in the program.
The famous “buy with a click” feature, which allows consumers to enter their billing and shipping details at once to make online purchases, was created by Amazon in 1997. At the time, e-commerce was beginning to develop, and technology has promoted a real revolution for making life easier for consumers.
Amazon owns the «1-Click» technology patent – Photo: Reproduction / Ana LetĂcia Loubak
The intellectual property behind “1-Clique» was protected by a patent granted in 1999 by Amazon. That is, companies that wanted to use the system should pay a license. In 2000, Apple acquired the license to use the feature and the trademark 1-Click on the Apple Online Store. With the end of the patent in 2017, other online stores are free to use the formula.
Via Business Insider (1, 2 and 3), Wired, LogoMyWay, Apple and G1
Is the American Amazon website reliable? Opinion in the dnetc Forum.
Amazon in Brazil: Questions and Answers
