In a piece entitled “Why The Amazon Naysayers Should Be Scared,” Bloomberg Business Week writes that last week’s “blowout earning report” by the e-tailer “was yet another rousing movement in the entrepreneurial symphony being conducted in Seattle by Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Bezos.
“Everything seems to be going right just now: His company is attracting new customers and third-party sellers, getting existing customers to spend more, and increasing profitability on new ventures such as Amazon Web Services and the Kindle. In the context of those improved margins, its expensive investment in its own operations, normally so disconcerting to Wall Street, now looks much less foreboding. Amazon added almost 10,000 employees in the past three months and now employs 65,600 people, up from 37,900 a year ago. It is building at least 13 new fulfillment centers in the U.S. this year, which will allow it to accelerate delivery and perhaps even expand its nascent grocery-delivery business beyond Seattle.”
Furthermore, the story notes, just last week “Amazon and Texas officials announced the company will begin collecting sales tax in Texas by this July and that Amazon will invest at least $200 million in new distribution centers in the state. It’s one more example (California was another) where Amazon essentially blinked in its standoff with a state that wanted it to begin collecting sales tax. Yet Amazon still wins, because it builds the new distribution centers it needs to expand its operations. (CEO Jeff) Bezos has perfected the art of architecting the win-win situation.”
“Everything seems to be going right just now: His company is attracting new customers and third-party sellers, getting existing customers to spend more, and increasing profitability on new ventures such as Amazon Web Services and the Kindle. In the context of those improved margins, its expensive investment in its own operations, normally so disconcerting to Wall Street, now looks much less foreboding. Amazon added almost 10,000 employees in the past three months and now employs 65,600 people, up from 37,900 a year ago. It is building at least 13 new fulfillment centers in the U.S. this year, which will allow it to accelerate delivery and perhaps even expand its nascent grocery-delivery business beyond Seattle.”
Furthermore, the story notes, just last week “Amazon and Texas officials announced the company will begin collecting sales tax in Texas by this July and that Amazon will invest at least $200 million in new distribution centers in the state. It’s one more example (California was another) where Amazon essentially blinked in its standoff with a state that wanted it to begin collecting sales tax. Yet Amazon still wins, because it builds the new distribution centers it needs to expand its operations. (CEO Jeff) Bezos has perfected the art of architecting the win-win situation.”
- KC's View:
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Maybe it is me, but I often get the sense that Jeff Bezos is playing chess while everybody else is playing checkers.
At the risk of being overtly self-promotional - though relevantly so - I’d like to invite MNB readers who are attending the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) show in Dallas this week to attend a session I’m doing that will address some of this growth”
From Amazon to Zipcar: Innovations from the E-Revolution.
Twenty-first century change can quickly challenge your thinking and threaten your way of doing business - a new competitor, a new business concept, a new distribution model, or some other out-of-the-box idea that nobody saw coming. Tom Furphy, formerly of Wegmans and Amazon.com (where he developed the CPG business), and I will engage in a far-reaching and provocative dialogue that will include the audience and focus on where traditional retailing is heading, what can be learned from e-commerce successes, how to compete in the new environment, and how to understand the new consumer.
I hope we’ll see you there on Wednesday, May 2, at 10 am, in C Ballroom 2 in the Dallas Convention Center.
