From humble beginnings as a simple online bookstore, Amazon has become one of the best known Internet retailers in the world.
Although Amazon has been around now for a good few years, at heart it's a young company. Its concept works, and continues to work, because it not only listens to its customers but it actively involves them in the business. It also continues to diversify, upgrade and rethink its offering. From the original online bookstore, Cadabra.com, founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, Amazon now operates retail websites all over the world, offering everything from kitchen appliances to MP3 players to toys, and it has its virtual fingers in many real pies. It's easy to see then why Brian was "excited about Amazon."
Bricks vs. Clicks
Amazon is now one of many online companies converting increasingly more consumers to the joys of online shopping, and Brian has a view of the way this will ultimately affect high street sales. He says it's nice to see online sales continue to grow and he thinks they'll outgrow the total market for many years to come. But, he says "I don't know if it will end up fifty-fifty or sixty-forty and, for us, it's not important. The nice thing is that more and more people are choosing to shop online. Its not going to be a ‘them or us' situation: it's not online versus offline. I hope the high street doesn't disappear and I've got no doubt that it won't. I think what we are doing is making people on the high street redefine what their role is. If all you want to be is ‘me too' and try to price match someone else's CD or DVD or digital camera, well, your going to find it tough to survive on the high street if that's your proposition."
"If you're going to be on the high street I think you have to be able to offer a level of service that you don't get elsewhere. So, the bookshops that will survive are the ones that will have a crèche or a place to leave the kids, or a coffee shop associated with it or somebody coming in and doing readings - you have to do more than just sell a basic book. I think that's the message for the high street: the great players on the high street, of which there are many, will of course prosper but the very average and mediocre will find it tough. I see the future of retail being a very competitive industry still with some great online players and some great offline players competing with each other".
New Horizons
Amazon will be ensuring its own future though its continued expansion of existing lines as well as its ventures into new territory. It has recently opened a new Customer Service Centre in Cork as well as unveiling a wedding list service this year. Brian says that what you will see over time is a continuing expansion of categories, but this is not going to be a groundbreaking revolution. "If you look at the US, we're doing things like groceries just now so were looking at expanding what we offer, and the approach in Europe and in the UK is to really take the learning from the US and build on those. So, what you'll find is that we'll probably be quicker at introducing and ramping new categories in the UK because we can live off their learnings."
Global Power
Looking ahead to the future of Amazon, Brian says, "when we look out at the horizon, although you look back at eleven years of incredible growth, I don't see anything around that should be slowing us down. In the markets that we're in, like the UK, although we're a big business, we've got a relatively small share of the individual category. If you look at our share of TV sets or food blenders or even the CD market, it's relatively small. So we have got room to grow our share in almost every category we play in. Secondly, as we expand into these additional categories, that gives us further room for growth and I think, when you look at us offering more online and you look at more and more people with the propensity to shop online - you've just got a whole bunch of growth cards coming together. So I think in ten years' time Amazon will still be one of the key players, not just on the Internet, but one of the key players in retail in general and one of the few global retail powerhouses."
