Publication
Original publication date
Collections
Genres
Awards
Description
This book is the definitive story of Amazon.com, one of the most successful companies in the world, and of its driven, brilliant founder, Jeff Bezos. Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now. Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, giving readers the first in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon. Compared to tech's other elite innovators -- Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg -- Bezos is a private man. But he stands out for his restless pursuit of new markets, leading Amazon into risky new ventures like the Kindle and cloud computing, and transforming retail in the same way Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing. The Everything Store will be the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read.-- Publisher information.… (more)
User reviews
The best part of the book is highlighting the parts that went into Bezos Frankenstein monster. The first part comes from Wall Street and its liar's poker culture. Bezos and Amazon see no problems to break contracts and stiff their suppliers when they are in a position of strength. The author, given his daytime job of adoring CEOs, is mostly admiring Amazon's ruthlessness, with a faint hint of a gasp about the blood spilled by Amazon's victims. The second part comes from Walmart. Bezos picked Walmart managers to create Amazon's logistics and also its approach to blue collar workers. Everybody is at liberty not to work at Amazon. Those that agree to work according to Amazon's conditions work there at their own peril. The author does not mention Amazon employing neo-Nazi security guards to check Spanish and Eastern European guest workers in Germany. He does mention Amazon's stationing ambulances at their logistics center because this was cheaper than installing air conditioning or posed fewer security risks than opening the doors to let in fresh air.
Amazon excels at ham 'n' eggs partnerships were it supplies the eggs while its partner is carved up and served to the customer. It is Amazon's customers who are the main beneficiaries of Amazon's ruthlessness and exploitation of its partners, be it its employees, the distributors or suppliers. Amazon's customers benefit from low prices because Amazon keeps breaking price agreements with its suppliers because it has to "match the price" offered - by a shady Amazon subsidiary. By the book, this is apparently legal but it is deeply unfair. Exploiting loopholes is an Amazon specialty: It only managed to supply its customers with books because it kept exploiting a loophole in the minimum book order number of the wholesaler. It ordered one copy of the book it needed and nine copies of a book it knew to be out of print, thus getting free shipping. The same approach is used to get around paying taxes and labor laws. You better check the small print before doing business with Amazon because if they can exploit you, they will. Customers enjoy the fruits of these ill-gotten gains but ultimately will have to pay for the ruined infrastructure. While the book does not mention it, reading this book made it much clearer why Jeff Bezos wrote big checks to George W. Bush.
Their business ethos and process is indulged here more than the personalities, so you still don't fully get up close with Bezos; but detail enough here to realise that if you've not become quite that wealthy, it's partly at least that you're not quite as driven and rigorous as him.
How much more disruption do they have in them? Will they survive Bezos retiring -
As a contrast, I also recently read “In the plex” about Google which is also fascinating and scary. It’s also interesting to see the seeming contrast in company culture between 2 web giants. Amazon seems to be run on traditional lines – hierarchies and committees with Bezos as final power.
Google seems to have tried to keep its university roots as a culture – less hierarchy and its engineers as the power.
The author portrays Jeff Bezos as an intriguing brilliant individual who could be as caustic as Steve Jobs but wasn't as cool as Steve Jobs. Also explored was its founder's ability to will an incredible organization into existence focused on customer service and loyalty while sometimes compromising employee service and loyalty. We who work in the tech industry know the Jeff Bezos type and are probably more forgiving of the idiosyncrasies and impaired social skills that is the shadow side of technical brilliance and focus on excellence. We are left with respect for the man and a clear reminder that he is just a man with outstanding qualities that have contributed value to the marketplace and abrasiveness that has created problems.
The abrasive personality is on display in the tumultuous and contentious relationship with book publishers and distributors especially around the development and release of the Kindle. The author describes the market attempts, and failures, to popularize an electronic reader and the eventual success of the Kindle platform. As a Kindle user, and lover of books, I was engrossed in this part of the history and I think most bibliophiles will be as well.
The contentious relationship with the book industry and other suppliers made me consider the same question I had after watching a documentary of Walmart's relationship with its suppliers: do low prices come at a high cost? We enjoy a convenience of what we need when we need it. My local Walmart is 24-hour and has items that I never thought I'd need after 9pm when most stores close. Amazon has items that would require me to drive across town wasting time and gas in traffic. I am a customer of both organizations. However, we must also balance it with the loss of some local retailers (and their jobs), minimal profits for suppliers (profits that can go into developing new products), livable wages, and perhaps other issues. I did not develop an answer to the question and I imagine we will continue to ponder such questions. There is much to admire and fear about how Amazon became a success. Did we sacrifice some intangibles that we will greatly miss for cheaper products? Have we not been able to calculate the true value of Amazon and Walmart's contribution to the marketplace in ways that far exceed what we can truly grasp? It may be that in holding onto the Main Street of the past with a false nostalgia and that the cottage industries and small business opportunities these global behemoths created are the success stories we should be cheering. In fact, the end of the book, which chronicles the development of Amazon Web Services which is fueling many Internet businesses that are creating value and jobs worldwide.
I listened to this on the unabridged audiobook and it is well narrated and produced.
Given the description of working conditions at Amazon, I remain puzzled about why anyone would want to work there, but my job/career has never been the defining character of my existence. I would make a lousy executive. I have mixed feelings about the intersection of innovation & efficiency of businesses like Amazon with the needs of the workforce. The creativity and innovation is great, and of course who doesn’t love lower prices? But I am afraid it sometimes comes at the expense of treating employees like human beings. I’m also curious about what percentage of Amazon’s revenues come from retail and how much comes from other sources.
I had to turn this back into the library before reviewing, so here is what I remember about the book. It is divided in three sections:
Faith describes Bezos early life and career and the beginnings of Amazon.com.
Literary Influences describes the growth of Amazon, the strategies they used to improve logistics and move themselves beyond functioning only as an online retailer and into becoming a publicly traded company. Bezos apparently started with books because no one was selling them online, but retail was never his long-term goal.
Missionary or Mercenary? Is the final section, don’t remember the focus of this section. I think this included the discussion of maneuvering regarding sales tax, and some guessing about where Amazon might go in the future.
But Amazon has not been reluctant to use its size and marketing channel to pressure suppliers. Amazon's frugality may benefit the consumer but at what cost to competitors? And at what cost to employees such as those who work without air conditioning in some fulfillment centers? Absolutely fascinating book that the NY Society for Ethical Culture will be discussing precisely because of such issues on April 7, 2014. Is Amazon becoming the online WalMart? Their pay levels don't put its employees on food stamps but still....
Amazon has obviously not reached its peak and continues to innovate. This book offers an intriguing peek at why and how the company works. Definitely a good read for those interested in how successful businesses operate.
Clearly in all the above, Amazon has been massively successful. Yet it has faced criticism over tax and some of its employee policies, and as Brad Stone, and many past employees point out, Amazon has no culture of work-life balance and different teams working together: Bezos appears to believe that creative tension creates progress and drives up standards. There is a powerful feeling across the political divide in the US that Amazon has got too big and is exercising a distorting effect on many markets (though some of this is caused by political jealousy, for example Trump's dislike of the liberal Washington Post newspaper, also owned by Bezos). Brad Stone is apparently writing an updated version of this book, which should be an interesting read. Certainly, barring some unforeseen catastrophe, Amazon's capacity for forward-looking thinking and not resting on its laurels seems set to ensure it continues to evolve and play a key role in online retail for many years to come.