Can you please help me narrow it down to a paragraph about Amazon business where and when and how it started the business model, stock price then compare it to pre consolidtion of whole foods . ANY ARTICLE WOULD BE HELPFUL. THANKS ARTICLE Amazon is a Seattle-based e-commerce and cloud computing company, founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. The company started as an online bookstore in July 1995, when the first Amazon website came online, with the desire to Get Big Fast, not wanting to be a simple online retailer but instead a technology company that simplified transactions for costumers. This was evident through the way the companys website was built, allowing for customizable searches by names, writers, publishers and even broader search parameters for more undecided readers, such as mood, reading habits and preferences. Amazon went public in May 1997 and invested their IPO proceeds into improving their website and logistics, opening a new distribution centre in Delaware and expanding their Seattle centre, while also setting the goal for 95% same-day shipping for in-stocks items. By the end of the year, Amazon became the first internet retailer to reach 1 million customers. 8 The companys great growth allowed for international expansion and to begin to branch out in the item selection in the following year. Amazon acquired two companies in Europe, Bookpages in the UK and Telebook in Germany, providing access to a new customer base. Internet Movie Database (IMDb) was bought to help their planned movement into the online video market, a very valuable resource and source of information. 1998 was also the year when Amazon announced the expansion into the online music business, allowing for costumers to listen to over 225 thousand sound clips before purchasing. The trend continued in the following decade, with focus on growth as opposed to profits, both organically and inorganically (see Exhibit 9 for timeline for major M&A deals by Amazon). More products and services were added throughout the years, resulting in Amazon becoming the largest internet-based retailer in the world (see Exhibit 10 for Amazon financial data). Products and Services Amazon sells many different kinds of products, such as apparel, electronics, books, tools and consumer goods, on the companys buy-it-now marketplace. It works worldwide as a B2B2C business model, where third parties can sell through their websites, and a B2C business model, where Amazon sells its own products, the most well-known being Echo & Alexa devices, the Fire tablets, Fire TV and the Kindle e-reader (see Exhibit 11 for Amazon core countries). Arguably Amazons most notable service is Amazon P. This is a yearly subscription programme costing $99 (increased in 2014 from $79 price when launched in 2005) that offers free two-day shipping for all eligible purchases and discount on one-day shipping. 9 It was first launched in the United States in 2005 and by 2016 was also available in Germany, Japan, UK, France, Italy, Canada and India. Throughout the years, Amazon bundled other services to the Amazon P subscription (likely the one of the reasons for the price increase in 2014) to render it more appealing and to gain consumer loyalty. Adding to the shipping advantages, Amazon P offers many advantage in the entertainment scene, such as P Video, a service similar to Netflix, where subscribers have on-demand access to thousands of movies and shows to watch on their devices; P Music, that allows for music streaming and downloads for offline use; P Reading, providing unlimited access to thousands of books, magazines and audiobooks; Twitch Prime, a gaming streaming platform where this exclusive membership allows for free access and pre-orders to certain videogames, ad-free viewing and a free subscription to a streamer of the subscribers choosing; Prime Photo, an unlimited storage and image sharing platform. Other benefits include early access to certain deals and receiving money back on their purchases using Amazon cards. Amazons cloud computing services are grouped under Amazon Web Services. These are aimed mostly at businesses and content creators and encompasses several computer-based solutions for clients in areas such as computing, storage, network & content delivery, developer tools, machine learning, analytics and augmented/virtual reality. Despite being Amazons smallest revenue driver, the main two being North America and International (geographical distinctions for their e-commerce core business), accounting for about 9% of revenue in 2016, it is Amazons fastest growing division, with a net sales growth of 70% in 2015 and 55% in 2016. It is also Amazons most profitable division in terms of operating income, accounting for 67.5% of Amazons operating income in 2015 and 74.2% in 2016. 10 Transaction Control Amazons product and service offering is extremely diverse but not necessarily what distinguishes Amazon from the competition. The incredible logistics that allow the company to provide such reliable delivery and fast response times is part of the backbone that makes operations run smoothly. Amazon encourages sellers to use Fulfilment by Amazon, which allows sellers to create their own product listings on Amazon websites and ship the products to Amazon fulfilment centres rather than the buyer directly. Once customers place their orders on the Amazon website, the company itself handles the shipping and allows for tracking information on the product bought. This system allows for a full control over the supply chain, allowing the company to deliver on their promise for Amazon subscribers of free 1- and 2-day shipping for eligible products. There is also the added security for the buyer, because he/she knows exactly where to ship the products and doesnt have to worry about complicated logistics for distant deliveries, and for the seller, who has the Amazon promise of timely and secure delivery of their orders. Amazon also developed their own payment system, Amazon Pay, because transaction safety isnt limited to the physical delivery of the products; the financial aspect of the transaction is also important. This service allows shoppers to make purchases on the Amazon website (and third-party websites that accept the service as a payment method) with no transaction fees, no membership fee, no currency conversion fee, no foreign transaction fee and no other fees. Day 1 Mentality and Customer Obsession Day 1 are probably the best words to describe Jeff Bezos philosophy for Amazon, so much so that he attaches his first letter to shareholders written in 1997 (year of the 11 Amazon IPO) to the yearly shareholder letter and to the annual report and has even named Amazons Seattle office building after it. Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1. (...) Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight. A customer-obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen. Jeff Bezos, in Annual Letter to Shareholders 2016. Amazons transition into the Grocery industry and Brick-and-Mortar Amazon Fresh was Amazons first major endeavour in the grocery business. This was a grocery delivery service launched in 2007, only available in certain major US cities with large metropolitan areas. However, the online grocery business was still emerging. Only around 12% of US consumers bought grocery online in 2016, of which the greatest costumers were millennials. Given that grocery stores still account for 46% of all store- based retail, it would be unwise to miss out on such as a large component of their consumers lives. Whole Foods Market was a change to dive in head-first into the grocery industry, as Amazon hoped to bundle further into their products and services, to the point where it is, as Jeff Bezos puts it, such a good value, youd be irresponsible not to be a member. In December 2016, Amazon launched a trial grocery store in Seattle for its employees called Amazon Go where the shoppers could simply grab whichever items they wished to purchase and, through a variety of sensors, their Amazon account would be automatically charged with the bill for whatever they picked up from the store, completely negating the existence of queues. The project, despite innovative and guided by their 12 consumer-obsession, the brick-and-mortar strategy is a significant shift from Amazons historical online-only presence. The strategic shift began before Amazon Go, with the opening of Amazon Books in late 2015, a physical bookstore in Seattle. This grew to 13 stores by late 2017, with plans to open at least three more. The advantage of having physical stores is the ability to market themselves to a greater audience and improve consumer relations to ultimately boost online traffic and sales. The website and bookstore are still strongly linked. The books available at the bookstores are selected according to pre-order and ratings on the Amazon.com website and each book is displayed such that the barcode is visible to allow the use of the Amazon app to check prices. This trend has been noticed among other online retailers, of which most are clothing and specialty stores such as Casper, Bonobos, Warby Parker and Birchbox. The competitive and saturated e-commerce market made it harder for companies to stand out and online real estate was becoming more expensive too. For example, according to L2 Inc, Macys and Nordstrom spent $6.4 million and $4 million respectively in Q1 2015 in paid search listings for the top 1000 apparel-related keywords. While the trend going forward was somewhat unpredictable and guided by consumer preferences, it seemed e-commerce and brick-and-mortar were suitable complements.