Bezoz interview out. This guy can B.S. with the best of em.
Amazon.com founder spells out 'customer-centric' mission
Try to define Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq:AMZN) to company founder and CEO Jeff Bezos and he's certain to disagree. It's unclear what exactly Amazon is just yet, so Bezos falls back on the mantra of creating an entirely new customer experience. Mentioning "selling products for profits" is tantamount to sullying the pure mission of innovation and building value. In an interview this week with PC Week Editor John Dodge, Bezos talked about these issues as well as profits, personalization and Amazon's future.
PC Week: With its "Shop the Web" page and recent investment in drugstore.com, Amazon is expanding beyond books, videos and music. Will Amazon become a Web department store?
Jeff Bezos
Bezos: I disagree with that premise. We are trying to innovate in the e-commerce arena. That's our heritage. We are building something that can't be pigeon-holed. We defy easy analogy. It's not a vision that can be communicated in a sound bite. We want to be the most customer-centric company in the world. Come and discover and buy anything online. Barnes & Noble is on a different mission, and they are doing this because we are.
PC Week: When will Amazon be profitable and how important are profits?
Bezos: To be profitable [now] would be a bad decision. This is a critical formation time if you believe in investing in the future. We don't make external [profit] projections. We have internal ones and those change from time to time.
PC Week: Profit sounds like a dirty word. Don't you have to be profitable eventually?
Bezos: Profits are the lifeblood of a company but not the reason to exist. You don't live for your blood, but you couldn't live without it. We were profitable for about an hour in December, 1995, but it was probably a mistake. And in December of last year, our book business was profitable. But it's not clear that's in our shareholders' long-term interest.
PC Week: How can you be experts in everything?
Bezos: Take a company like Conde Nast. They have magazines that are the best in particular areas with the best editorial and merchandising staffs. Keep in mind that our strategy is to partner with others. We have over 200,000 associates. They put books into context. We have one [expert] who recommends books on Labrador Retrievers. We could never do that. [Our partners] give customers the best advice possible.
PC Week: Will you be selling drugs and health aids on Amazon with the investment in drugstore.com?
Bezos: We have a link to it ... but [no]. It is a separate company and another model for partnering in a very complex area. They have the same extreme focus on the customer experience that we have.
PC Week: Your market cap is around $20 billion. How does that factor into your decision making?
Bezos: It doesn't. Management needs to be focused 24 hours a day creating genuine value for customers. Wall Street analysts are focused on it. We are building an important and lasting company.
PC Week: Does it reflect reality?
Bezos: Long term, there is a 100 percent correlation between the [market cap] and value of the company. One thing I can say is that Amazon and other pure Internet plays are extremely volatile and are not appropriate for the portfolios of small investors.
PC Week: Who are your competitors?
Bezos: We have a whole bunch in different places. In music, it's Tower [Records]. In books, it's Barnes & Noble and Borders. Long term, there are no companies we focus on as competitors.
PC Week: Were the stories about Amazon selling book review placements an embarrassment?
Bezos: It was not embarrassing. This is something every catalog company and retailer does. The recommendations were never for sale. Now we disclose the whole practice. What surprised us is that our customers hold us to a higher standard. It's too bad there was this misunderstanding.
PC Week: Small bookstores blame Amazon for their sorry state. What's your response?
Bezos: They primarily point the finger at the big chains. I go to Elliot Bay Bookstore here in Seattle and buy half my books at bookstores. You can hear the bindings creak and you can touch and smell the books. There's been strong pressure on independent bookstores for five years. It started happening long before Amazon was around.
PC Week: What's the next big thing with e-commerce?
Bezos: The next big thing is personalization. We've only seen the first 2 percent. If Amazon has 6.2 million customers, there should be 6.2 million highly customized stores. It's a myth that there is an average customer.
PC Week: What other e-commerce sites do you admire?
Bezos: The Quicken Web [from Intuit] is really organized and extraordinary. I tend to use lots of small Web sites. I just found one on tree houses. That sort of thing.
PC Week: What would you change about Amazon?
Bezos: I do think it is the leader in e-commerce. The thing I would change is how long it takes the PC to turn on. The time it takes is completely unnecessary.
PC Week: Will the PC forever own the Internet or will see all types of Internet appliances?
Bezos: In the short term, it will be PCs and Macs. Long term there will be an incredible diversity of devices. A large portion of them will be wireless. But that's more than 10 years away.
LOL! Read this again: "Profits are the lifeblood of a company but not the reason to exist. (profits)it's not clear that's in our shareholders' long-term interest.
That's a new one. I guess Bezo really wants Amazon to be a Non-profit corporation. |
