Amazon.com
Inducted in 1999

"The Earth's Biggest Bookstore"

Way back in 1994, a brilliant young computer scientist plying his trade with the financial industry was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. While exploring new business opportunities in the unexplored world of the Internet, he concluded that the most logical thing to sell was books because two of the country's largest book distributors already had exhaustive electronic lists.

He quit his job on Wall Street and made that now famous drive across the country to lay the groundwork for a brand that has gone from non-existence four years ago to a household name. Today, Amazon.com, billed as the Earth's biggest bookstore, offers 4.7 million books, CDs, audiobooks, DVDs, computer games and more through its on-line store. Sold at discounts of up to 40%, books are ordered directly from distributors or publishers after the customer makes a selection; most are delivered in two to three days. Amazon.com also offers free e-mail notification of new books and recommendations for specified genres or subjects. More than 8 million people in 160+ countries have bought from the virtual retailer that is the leading online shopping site.

It started in July 1995, when Jeff Bezos and colleagues hung out a shingle in cyberspace from a converted garage of a rented home in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue. The business was founded on the belief that an Internet retailer of books, music and other information-based products can offer services traditional retailers cannot: lower prices, authoritative selection and a wealth of product information. In addition to developing a solid business plan and a year of testing, Bezos put a lot of thought into what to call the new venture. Amazon was chosen because it suggested great size--alluding to Amazon's huge database. Within just a few weeks of the July debut, as the orders--and dollars--poured in, Bezos knew he was onto something. The rest is history, even though a short one. In those four short years since, the company:

• Went public in May 1997 and made its founder and others millionaires many times over;
• Expanded beyond books with the June 1998 launch of a music store and within three months became the No. 1 online music seller;
• Launched a video store and holiday gift store, offering a variety of products, including selected personal electronics and toy products in November 1998, and soon after became the No. 1 online video seller;
• Expanded internationally with the acquisition of Internet companies in Germany and the U.K. and the launch of businesses in these countries under the Amazon.com brand;
• Began expanding into online auctioning this year.

Now, whenever the name Amazon is mentioned, it's not the massive river in South America or tropical rain forests that come to mind but instead the company that has pioneered online shopping and changed the whole notion of what retailing is all about.