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With the rapid introduction of computers and the internet into our lives, the exemplary names given to
world-renowned successful business people and wealth owners have changed at the same pace. Many
names such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg climbed to the top of the charts with both their
success and wealth. The person at the forefront of these names is undoubtedly Jeff Bezos. There is a lot
to be said about Jeff Bezos, but you should know that he is the founder, CEO and president of
Amazon.com in the first place, and also the founder and owner of Blue Origin, a space exploration
company. Jeff Bezos is one of the most talked about names in the world with his wealth. When Jeff
Bezos' life is examined, it is possible to see that he has taken firm steps forward.

When he opened his eyes to the world, the calendars were showing January of 1964. Bezos was born in
New Mexico but grew up in Houston and Texas. Jeff Bezos made decisions about his life in his childhood
and became interested in science and mechanics. He turned the garage of his family home into a base
for his work.

The most important part of the Jeff Bezos biography story begins with his college life. When he started
university in 1986, he chose Princeton University, where Albert Einstein taught until the last days of his
life. He studied Electrical and Computer Science Engineering here and as soon as he graduated from the
department, he took his breath in Wall Street, the center of the stock market. He also managed to show
himself on Wall Street and took the position of vice president of financial company DE Shaw. He became
the youngest vice president of the company to date. He fell in love with his colleague MacKenzie and
they were married within 6 months. Then he resigned from DE Shaw and founded Amazon, and his
unstoppable rise began.

Amazon changed the lives of not only Bezos but also internet users as of its establishment. In 2004, he
founded the space exploration company Blue Origin. When Bezos founded this company, he aimed to
develop new technologies for space flight and ultimately to initiate human travel into space. Blue Origin,
the rocket launch facility, continues to work hard for Bezos' goals.

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Amazon, or Amazon.com as it is known, was originally founded in July 1994 by Jeff Bezos, who was then
a hedge fund manager on Wall Street. Originally its name was thought to be “Cadabra” rather than
Amazon, a reference to the word “Abracadabra”; however, the idea was abandoned when Bezos' lawyer
told him that this reference to magic might be a bit too vague and difficult to understand. Also, when
most people heard the word Cadabra on the phone, they confused it with the word "Cadaver" meaning
cadaver, which, as one might imagine, was not very desirable.

So Bezos and his then-wife, MacKenzie Tuttle, sought new names for their potential new venture. A
short time later, Bezos; It registered the names Awake.com, Browse.com, Bookmall.com, and
Relentless.com and even settled on Relentless.com. Even today, if you search for Relentless.com in your
browser, you will be redirected to Amazon.com.

While scrolling through the dictionary for inspiration, Jeff Bezos came across the word 'Amazon' and
thought the name would fit his company perfectly, especially since he predicted that his online store
would be the largest in the world, just as the Amazon river is one of the world's largest rivers. This is the
main reason why Amazon is called the 'everything store'. Thus, Amazon was registered on November 1,
1994. The name was taken care of, and it was time to find something to sell.

Bezos knew at the time that he wanted to create some kind of online retailer; but he wasn't sure exactly
what to sell. After some research, he settled on the book, which was relatively easy to source, package,
and distribute. Amazon was not the first company to implement this business strategy. Computer
Literacy, a Silicon Valley bookstore, had already started selling its products online as early as 1991, long
before Amazon.

What made Amazon different was that it promised more convenience. From the very beginning, it was
built on the business model of delivering online orders directly to a customer's address anywhere in the
world.

As we all know, Amazon today is much, much more than books. That was always the plan, according to
Bezos. Amazon has never been a consumer-only retailer, Bezos claims. According to Bezos, from the
very beginning, Amazon was a technology company whose main job was to facilitate customers' online
transactions.

After following Bezos' initial business plan for a while, the company also began selling music and video
games in 1998. Amazon, which also bought online bookstores in the UK and Germany, has taken its
services to international dimensions. With the advent of the millennium, now Amazon; It began selling
many products, including consumer electronics, video games, software, home improvement products,
toys, and games.

In the mid-2000s, Amazon launched the Amazon Web Service (AWS). The innovation was also very much
in line with Bezos' idea that Amazon was actually a tech company rather than an online retailer. By
2006, Amazon expanded its AWS portfolio with its cloud computing platform, Elastic Compute Cloud
(EC2), and later added Simple Storage Service (S3).

Expansion of the company with digital services such as EC2 and S3 would also increase its earnings
significantly. These two services make up the bulk of AWS's revenue today. In 2007, the first Kindle e-
readers began to appear. These relatively lower-cost handheld tablets would stimulate the e-book
market, and by 2012 Kindle would account for about 50% of Android-based tablet sales.

With the success of the Kindle, in 2011, Amazon stepped into the e-book publishing market with the
Amazon Publishing service. That same year, Amazon announced that e-books were selling more than
traditional print books. Since then, Amazon has continued to expand and grow, acquiring fresh produce
shipping, drone delivery and many other services, and even launching at its own airports.

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During the founding of the company, many of Bezos' peers and critics expressed skepticism about this
business model. The harshest of these criticisms usually came from financial newspapers, and they often
vilified the company as Amazon.bomb. Many of these critics, especially those who are following the case
and set up their own sites, argued that Amazon.com would ultimately fail to compete with the more
established booksellers and lose.

The fact that Amazon didn't make a profit until the first quarter of 2001 didn't help much, either, but
Bezos never lost faith and didn't take his opponents seriously, describing them as people who didn't see
the potential of the business. Bezos has always argued that to be a successful online retailer, Amazon
must grow fast; as a matter of fact it happened. And what growth!

By December 1996, the company's customer base was already at an impressive 180,000. In October of
the following year, the figures showed approximately 1,000,000 this time. The company's earnings
reached approximately $148 million in 1997, which is; That was a huge jump compared to the previous
year's earnings of about $16 million.

Amazon has continued its life as a private company up to this point, but Bezos soon realized that; If he
wanted his company to continue growing, he needed much more than private investment. Thus,
Amazon went public in 1997 and managed to raise an impressive $54 million on the NASDAQ exchange.
In addition to cash, the company has also started stock sales to finance its aggressive growth and
acquisition strategy. By 1998, Amazon's earnings had reached 600 million.

With this giant rise of Amazon, Bezos also managed to catch the eye. In addition, Time magazine named
Bezos its "Person of the Year" in 1999. At that time, Amazon also launched the now very lucrative
Affiliate program. Other companies participating in the program could sell Amazon's products on their
own platforms, and Amazon would prepare and ship the orders - and thus both parties won. The affiliate
program has proven itself to be a very logical step. While the number of shareholders of the company
was 1 in 1996, this number was over 350,000 in 1999.

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Amazon is the largest e-commerce retailer in the world with a diversified business portfolio. It operates
in multiple international locations with an employee strength of 798.000. In order to manage an
organization of such massive stature it needs to have a robust organizational structure. The
organizational structure of an organization determines how to operational activities are directed in
order to achieve the desired goals. It established the chain of command flow of information and the
hierarchical ladder. For a large-scale international company like Amazon it needs to have a well-defined
structure in order to seamlessly manage every functional and divisional units which maintaining clear
communition with every stakeholder.

The organizational structure of Amazon follows a vertical hierarchial approach where the chain of
command travels from top to bottom. While discussing about the organizational structure of Amazon it
should be noted that the company follows a bureaucratic culture where the major decisions are made
by the top management such as the CEOs and CFOs.
The hierarchy of Amazon as shown in the chart above, clearly highlights the hierarchical structure. Jeff
Bezos who is the Chairman, CEO and President of the Board, is at the top of the hierarchy and is
responsible for making any major decision in the company or approving the ones made by others. He
along with other top management figures, form the “S-team”. The S-team consists of global divisional
heads of all the business divisions and functional departments. This team bears the responsibility to
bring new ideas to the table and establishing an action plan for its implementation. Since, each of the
members are head of their respective departments, they have a clear understanding of the status quo of
respective divisions. During each S-team meeting, Jeff Bezos becomes of any notable changes or
concerning situations in the company, take part in developing the necessary strategy for it. For a
company like Amazon, which has expanded its business through diversification, it can be quite difficult
for the company to have a centralized control. However, Amazon through its clearly defined structure
has ensured that there is a seamless flow of information and coordination among all the stakeholders of
the company.

The organizational structure of Amazon is based on strong foundation of its culture. Amazon is highly
customer oriented. It is constantly looking forward to develop new ideas to maximize the value of the
customers. This is clearly reflected in its organizational structure. Even though the company prefer to
maintain a strict centralized control over its operations, it also offers certain degree of independence to
the international headquarters to adopt a localized approach, while catering to the target customers. A
close look at Amazon’s organizational structure chart, indicates that the company has clearly defined
divisions for its international operations. These international divisions are given certain level of
autonomy to design its marketing mix for respective local markets. Thus, Amazon is able to offer
localized services to its customers, while maintaining its global standardized brand image and
organizational culture.
It should also be noted that despite of the massive employee strength of the company, Amazon believes
in building small teams. Working with small teams enables the firm to become more efficient in their
projects. Amazon follows its famous ‘Two Pizza’ rule, which suggests that if one cannot feed a team with
two large pizza, that the team is too big. Amazon is highly focused on bringing new value propositions to
its customers, and working with small teams enhances the idea generation and its implementation.
Moreover, smaller teams are much easier to communicate with for a supervisor.

As mentioned earlier, Amazon is a highly diversified company, which operates in multiple industries.
Each of these ventures are serrated into foundational groups, overseen by respective supervisors. The
hierarchy in Amazon branches out from top to bottom, where the CEO of Worldwide consumer, Jeff
Wilke oversees all the retail functions of the company and reports directly to Jeff Bezos. Simultaneously,
individuals like Dave Clark, SVP Worldwide operations and Dave Treadwell, VP e-commerce foundation,
report directly to Jeff Wilke. This vertical structure is present throughout the entire organization, in
every functional division. This structure serves two crucial purposes. Firstly, it provides strict control
over each and every operational activities of the organization, no matter how small or how localized it is.
The CEO of the company, is able to monitor and supervise every activity in the organization, through the
chain of command. Secondly, the company is able to maintain consistency in its organizational culture
and operational practices. Amazon is highly focused on creating a standardized global brand, which is
perceived equally to every customer, irrespective of the target market. This has been achieved through
maintain a standardized customer-oriented culture all across the organization.

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Continuing its activities under the leadership of Jeff Bezos, Amazon attracts attention with its little-
known details, although it is well known.

When Jeff Bezos first laid the groundwork for the project in 1995, he made a sale by turning a simple
garage into a bookstore. Bezos, who started opening stores in 2015, re-established these bookstores to
keep the memory of the company's early days.

The giant company's profit rate nearly doubled from 2017 to 2018, but it didn't pay taxes in the interim.
It looks illegal at first glance, but it's perfectly legal. The US government can apply certain tax breaks and
tax cuts to companies. Amazon's total tax cut from 2005 to 2014 is around $600 million.

Amazon, one of the largest e-commerce sites in the world, sells thousands of products in hundreds of
different categories, but contrary to popular belief, we cannot buy everything we want from Amazon.
Amazon; It does not allow the sale of houses, cars, pets and tobacco products.

The size of Amazon, one of the largest companies in the world, is more than we think. Even on IMDb,
where you go to review the reviews of a movie you want to watch, you make money for Amazon
because it also belongs to Amazon.

Amazon employees enjoy having pets in the office. Moreover, there are 6,000 dogs on campus in
Seattle. All employees can easily bring their pets to work.

Not wanting its employees to stay at their desk all the time, Amazon opened The Spheres on its campus
in Seattle last year. This place, called Spheres, is home to more than 400 plant species. Thus, employees
can maintain their ties with nature.
The arrow going from A to Z in the company's logo gives the message, "You can find everything from A
to Z," which is one of the company's mottos. In addition, the graphic structure of the arrow makes
people smile, just like emojis, according to research. Thus, it enables you to have a positive interaction
with the brand from the very first moment.

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What made Amazon so appealing in its early days was the convenience it offered; a potential customer
no longer had to go to a physical bookstore to get the book they were looking for. The convenience of
searching, choosing, purchasing the book you want from your home and having the product delivered to
your doorstep within a few days was an incredible comfort at that time. With the expansion of the
product range it offers to its customers, Amazon's appeal has increased in the right proportion.
However, this success is not related to the products they sell.

Amazon owes its success, like many other companies, to the services it offers. These services have
earned the company significant customer loyalty and large profits in the long run. Another innovation
that Amazon offers to its customers is the recommended product function. With this function, which
recommends other products that customers can buy based on the products they have purchased
before, Amazon has managed to multiply its earnings even more. Adding customer reviews to products
also helped foster a kind of "customer community" that made products more attractive to potential
buyers.

In recent years, Amazon has achieved the success of being the second company with a market
capitalization of $ 1 trillion in history, after Apple. Amazon saw record growth in 2020 after announcing
its plan to set up its second headquarters in New York but canceling that plan after incoming political
pressure.

When people had to stay in their homes with the pandemic in 2020, Amazon and similar online retail
companies added wealth to their fortunes. The last important news in Amazon's adventure of more than
25 years was the announcement that Bezos will leave his CEO position in the company with the fall of
2021. It is not yet clear how the Company will perform without Bezos at the helm; however, considering
past performances, it would not be wrong to say that the company will not lose much from its success.

An obsessive attention to detail, Bezos personally reads and edits every line of the press releases
Amazon serves. As we know from Amazon.com, it is among the rumors that Bezos, who values customer
satisfaction above all else, brings an empty chair to the meetings and wants the employees to please the
imaginary customer in the chair as if there was a customer there. The ambitious entrepreneur of the
nineties continues his adventure, which started in the garage of a small house, today by running an
empire at the head of the world's largest online retail company.