12th
July
2005
A Retail Revolution Turns 10
“Ten years ago this week, Amazon.com made its Internet premiere when Mr. Bezos opened a Web site he audaciously called ‘Earth’s Biggest Bookstore.’ Amazon sold only a half-million dollars’ worth of books in the first six months, but was soon posting the kind of gaudy growth rates that impress Wall Street: sales hit $15.7 million in 1996 and $147.8 million in 1997. Yet the more familiar story of Amazon in the second half of the 1990’s was the rate at which it burned through cash. In 1999, for example, its revenue hit $1.6 billion, but it still lost $719 million.”