Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com and owner of THE WASHINGTON POST, was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jeff Bezos, who had a difficult childhood and youth, took the first steps of amazon.com upon a piece of news he read in 1994.
In the news he read, it was written that the internet grew by 2300 percent. Jeff Bezos, who was quite affected by this situation, combined the internet with his startup and created a product.
At that time, the non-online book sale was the first product Jeff Bezos sold online. This story, which started in a small garage, made Jeff Bezos the richest person in 2018. In this article, we will describe Jeff Bezos’s 10 failed attempts on this path.
1- Kozmo.com:
Kozmo.Com was established in New York in March 1998. To summarize the company’s function, it produces games, magazines, DVDs, food, etc. It was a service that delivered the products to you within 1 hour after your order.
The company, which received an investment of 60 million dollars from amazon.com in 1999, promised to deliver the smallest order to the buyer within 1 hour. However, it was very difficult to balance income and expenditure, so it was not very successful at that time.
2- Pet.com:
pet.com was established in 1998 to order pet supplies over the internet and deliver them to the consumer via cargo. In 1999, it received an investment of 50 million dollars from Amazon.
Although they were recognized as a brand, the number of customers did not increase at this rate. Their advertising expenses were too big compared to the revenues. The company also began to make a loss on every sale they made. For this reason, it went bankrupt in 2002.
3- Askville.com:
Askville was co-founded by Korean-American former investment banker Joseph Park, who co-founded Kozmo.com, formerly financed by Amazon.com. Askville entered beta testing in October 2006 and went public in November 2007.
Askville, an information-sharing site where people can ask questions and write answers, had a huge information archive, but this was not enough for it to continue its activities and the site was shut down in 2013.
4- Amazon Fire Phone:
Developed by Amzazon.com and Foxconn, the phone was launched in 2014. The selling price of $199 dropped to 99 cents within 2 months after many giants in the phone industry received bad reviews from some critics. Jeff Bezos lost $170 million from this venture.
5- Amazon Local Register:
With Amazon Local Register, Amazon has announced its credit card reader. Amazon Local Register, which acts as a POS device, was launched as a competitor to initiatives such as Paypal and Square but lagged far behind the competition. Amazon stopped selling this device in October 2015 and ended the program in February 2016.
6- Amazon TestDrive:
In short, the system, which allows people to test mobile applications before purchasing them, was shelved in 2015 due to the lack of demand and the excess of free applications in it.
7- Amazon Destinations:
Amazon Destinations, which provides services to its customers about which hotels and centers they can use during their travels and provides reservation opportunities, only survived for 6 months. No explanation was given from Bezos or Amazon as the reason for the failure.
8- Amazon Wallet:
Amazon Wallet launched in 2014. This card, which was used to organize gift cards and discount checks, was quite useless as it was not possible to use it as a credit or debit card.
9- Kindle Debacle:
Some books on the Kindle application, which allows you to read books digitally, are blocked from access by people with unapproved copies. This situation was perceived as censorship by the public and the company could not manage the process well. However, Jeff Bezos, who realized his mistake, apologized to the users.
10- Amazon Auctions and zShops:
Auctions, which started to sell with the auction method, could not reach many users. Bezos made the following comments about it: “We founded Amazon Auctions, but only 7 people, including me, used it. Then we converted it to zShops. Again, no one showed any interest.”
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