To our shareholders:
Amazon.com passed many milestones in 1997: by year-end, we had served more
than 1.5 million customers, yielding 838% revenue growth to $147.8 million, and
extended our market leadership despite aggressive competitive entry.
But this is Day 1 for the Internet and, if we execute well, for Amazon.com. Today,
online commerce saves customers money and precious time. Tomorrow, through
personalization, online commerce will accelerate the very process of discovery.
Amazon.com uses the Internet to create real value for its customers and, by doing so,
hopes to create an enduring franchise, even in established and large markets.
We have a window of opportunity as larger players marshal the resources to pursue
the online opportunity and as customers, new to purchasing online, are receptive to
forming new relationships. The competitive landscape has continued to evolve at a fast
pace. Many large players have moved online with credible offerings and have devoted
substantial energy and resources to building awareness, traffic, and sales. Our goal is to
move quickly to solidify and extend our current position while we begin to pursue the
online commerce opportunities in other areas. We see substantial opportunity in the large
markets we are targeting. This strategy is not without risk: it requires serious investment
and crisp execution against established franchise leaders.
It's All About the Long Term
We believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be the shareholder value
we create over thelong term. This value will be a direct result of our ability to extend and
solidify our current market leadership position. The stronger our market leadership, the
more powerful our economic model. Market leadership can translate directly to higher
revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger
returns on invested capital.
Our decisions have consistently reflected this focus. We first measure ourselves in
terms of the metrics most indicative of our market leadership: customer and revenue
growth, the degree to which our customers continue to purchase from us on a repeat
basis, and the strength of our brand. We have invested and will continue to invest
aggressively to expand and leverage our customer base, brand, and infrastructure as we
move to establish an enduring franchise.
Because of our emphasis on the long term, we may make decisions and weigh
tradeoffs differently than some companies. Accordingly, we want to share with you our
fundamental management and decision-making approach so that you, our shareholders,
may confirm that it is consistent with your investment philosophy:
We will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers.
We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market
leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or
short-term Wall Street reactions.
We will continue to measure our programs and the effectiveness of our
investments analytically, to jettison those that do not provide acceptable
returns, and to step up our investment in those that work best. We will
continue to learn from both our successes and our failures.
We will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see a
sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages. Some of these
investments will pay off, others will not, and we will have learned another
valuable lesson in either case.
When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our GAAP
accounting and maximizing the present value of future cash flows, we'll take
the cash flows.
We will share our strategic thought processes with you when we make bold
choices (to the extent competitive pressures allow), so that you may evaluate
for yourselves whether we are making rational long-term leadership
investments.
We will work hard to spend wisely and maintain our lean culture. We
understand the importance of continually reinforcing a cost-conscious culture,
particularly in a business incurring net losses.
We will balance our focus on growth with emphasis on long-term profitability
and capital management. At this stage, we choose to prioritize growth because
we believe that scale is central to achieving the potential of our business
model.
We will continue to focus on hiring and retaining versatile and talented
employees, and continue to weight their compensation to stock options rather
than cash. We know our success will be largely affected by our ability to
attract and retain a motivated employee base, each of whom must think like,
and therefore must actually be, an owner.
We aren't so bold as to claim that the above is the "right" investment philosophy, but
it's ours, and we would be remiss if we weren't clear in the approach we have taken and
will continue to take.
With this foundation, we would like to turn to a review of our business focus, our
progress in 1997, and our outlook for the future.
Obsess Over Customers
From the beginning, our focus has been on offering our customers compelling value.
We realized that the Web was, and still is, the World Wide Wait. Therefore, we set out to
offer customers something they simply could not get any other way, and began serving
them with books. We brought them much more selection than was possible in a physical
store (our store would now occupy 6 football fields), and presented it in a useful, easy-to-
search, and easy-to-browse format in a store open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. We
maintained a dogged focus on improving the shopping experience, and in 1997
substantially enhanced our store. We now offer customers gift certificates, 1-Click(SM)
shopping, and vastly more reviews, content, browsing options, and recommendation
features. We dramatically lowered prices, further increasing customer value. Word of
mouth remains the most powerful customer acquisition tool we have, and we are grateful
for the trust our customers have placed in us. Repeat purchases and word of mouth have
combined to make Amazon.com the market leader in online bookselling.
By many measures, Amazon.com came a long way in 1997:
Sales grew from $15.7 million in 1996 to $147.8 million -- an 838%
increase.
Cumulative customer accounts grew from 180,000 to 1,510,000 -- a 738%
increase.
The percentage of orders from repeat customers grew from over 46% in the
fourth quarter of 1996 to over 58% in the same period in 1997.
In terms of audience reach, per Media Metrix, our Web site went from a
rank of 90th to within the top 20.
We established long-term relationships with many important strategic
partners, including America Online, Yahoo!, Excite, Netscape, GeoCities,
AltaVista, @Home, and Prodigy.
Infrastructure
During 1997, we worked hard to expand our business infrastructure to
support these greatly increased traffic, sales, and service levels:
Amazon.com's employee base grew from 158 to 614, and we significantly
strengthened our management team.
Distribution center capacity grew from 50,000 to 285,000 square feet,
including a 70% expansion of our Seattle facilities and the launch of our
second distribution center in Delaware in November.
Inventories rose to over 200,000 titles at year-end, enabling us to
improve availability for our customers.
Our cash and investment balances at year-end were $125 million, thanks toour initial public offering in May 1997 and our $75 million loan,
affording us substantial strategic flexibility.
Our Employees
The past year's success is the product of a talented, smart, hard-working group, and I
take great pride in being a part of this team. Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring
has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com's
success.
It's not easy to work here (when I interview people I tell them, “You can work long,
hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can't choose two out of three”), but we are
working to build something important, something that matters to our customers,
something that we can all tell our grandchildren about. Such things aren't meant to be
easy. We are incredibly fortunate to have this group of dedicated employees whose
sacrifices and passion build Amazon.com.
Goals for 1998
We are still in the early stages of learning how to bring new value to our customers
through Internet commerce and merchandising. Our goal remains to continue to solidify
and extend our brand and customer base. This requires sustained investment in systems
and infrastructure to support outstanding customer convenience, selection, and service
while we grow. We are planning to add music to our product offering, and over time we
believe that other products may be prudent investments. We also believe there are
significant opportunities to better serve our customers overseas, such as reducing delivery
times and better tailoring the customer experience. To be certain, a big part of the
challenge for us will lie not in finding new ways to expand our business, but in
prioritizing our investments.
We now know vastly more about online commerce than when Amazon.com was
founded, but we still have so much to learn. Though we are optimistic, we must remain
vigilant and maintain a sense of urgency. The challenges and hurdles we will face to
make our long-term vision for Amazon.com a reality are several: aggressive, capable,
well-funded competition; considerable growth challenges and execution risk; the risks of
product and geographic expansion; and the need for large continuing investments to meet
an expanding market opportunity. However, as we've long said, online bookselling, and
online commerce in general, should prove to be a very large market, and it's likely that a
number of companies will see significant benefit. We feel good about what we've done,
and even more excited about what we want to do.
1997 was indeed an incredible year. We at Amazon.com are grateful to our customers
for their business and trust, to each other for our hard work, and to our shareholders for
their support and encouragement.
/s/ JEFFREY P. BEZOS
Jeffrey P. Bezos
Founder and Chief Executive OfficerAmazon.com, Inc.
翻译：Rick 2013年4月
致股东：亚马逊在1997年跨越了许多里程碑：到1997年年底，我们服务的顾客超过了150万；1997年我们的营业收入达到1.478亿美元，同比增长了838%。虽然有很多新的竞争对手进入了这个行业，但是我们继续保持了市场领导地位。对互联网行业来说，现在只是走出了万里长征的第一步。对于亚马逊来说，如果我们管理得好的话，也只走出了第一步。如今，电子商务为顾客节省了消费支出和宝贵的时间。未来，通过个性化服务，电子商务将加速这个进程。亚马逊利用互联网为客户创造真正的价值，同时我们希望建立一个有长期竞争优势的企业，即使是在已有的更大的产品市场中。现在我们处于一个重大机遇的时间窗口，很多大的零售商开始调整资源，想抓住电子商务的机会；而那些没有网上购物经验的顾客也愿意体验这种新的购物方式。市场的竞争格局在快速演化。很多大型的零售商已经开通电子商务并为消费者提供分期付款服务。他们将大量的精力和资源投入到这个领域，以期获得消费者的关注、流量以及销售业绩。我们的目标就是尽快强化并拓宽我们目前的市场地位，同时为进入新的电子商务领域做好准备（指不仅仅卖书，还卖别的产品）。我们在我们想进入的领域看到了巨大的商机。当然，这种战略并非没有风险：它需要巨额的资金投入和强大果断的执行力，以对抗那些试图进入电子商务且在线下已经十分强大的零售商。长期价值是我们工作的全部我们相信，衡量我们成功与否的基本标准，就在于我们是否为股东创造了长期价值。这种价值直接来自于我们巩固并拓展市场领导地位的能力。我们的市场领导地位越强大，我们的商业模式就越具有竞争力。强大的市场领导地位将带来更高的收入，更多的利润和更快的资金周转速度，以及相应的更高的投资回报率。我们所做的每一个决策都反应了我们对市场领导地位的关注。一开始，我们就将市场领导地位指标化：客户数量，收入增长率，客户的重复购买率，还有我们品牌的知名度。为了建立一个强大的有持续竞争力的企业，我们在拓展客户基数，强化品牌认同度以及基础设施方面投入了巨大资源，这样的投入将持续下去。基于我们对长期价值的专注，我们所做的很多决策以及权衡得失的理念都有别于其它一些企业。因此，我们希望与您分享我们的主要管理理念和决策方法，以让我们的股东能够判断我们的投资哲学是否与你们的相一致。我们将坚定不移地关注我们的客户。我们的投资决策将继续以“强化长期市场领导地位”为原则，而非关注公司短期的盈利或者华尔街的反应。我们将继续优化我们的项目评估机制，分析投资决策的有效性，果断抛弃那些不能提供令人满意的投资回报的项目，而对于那些运作良好的项目追加投入。同时，我们将继续从我们的成功和失败的经验中汲取经验教训。我们将大胆地、毫不犹豫地投资那些有助于提升我们市场领导能力的机会。这个过程中，一些投资将会取得较好的回报；另一些可能会让我们付出一定损失。但是无论是哪种情况，我们都会从中汲取有价值的经验教训。如果被要求在最优化公司的财务报表和最大化未来现金流这两者之间做出选择，我们会毫不犹豫的选择后者。当我们在做大胆的投资决策（在竞争允许的范围内）时，我们会与您们分享我们的战略决策流程，以让您评估这样的长期投资决策是否合理。我们会非常努力的工作，并保持我们不断学习的文化。我们知道强调成本控制这种文化的重要性，特别是对一个还处于净亏损的公司来说。我们会平衡关注收入增长和长期盈利与资本管理之间的关系。在这个阶段，我们会把收入增长放在最优先的位置，因为我们相信，一定的规模是实现我们商业模式最为核心的基础。我们会继续专注于吸引并留住那些有能力的员工，继续为他们提供更多的股票期权，而非现金。我们深知，我们的事业能否成功取决于我们能否吸引并留住有能力的团队。这个团队中的每一个人都必须像股东一样思考，因此他们必须成为股东。我们不敢断言上面的投资哲学就一定是正确的。但是，这就是我们的投资哲学。如果我们不把我们的投资哲学讲清楚，那么我们对股东就是不负责的。有了以上这些基础，接下来我们将对我们的业务进行回顾：1997年我们取得了哪些进展以及未来我们的愿景是什么。关注客户需求一开始，我们就专注于为客户带来价值。我们知道现阶段互联网仍然处于发展的初级阶段。因此，我们选择为客户提供一些他们无法从其他途径获取的服务或产品：我们开始在网上卖书。我们能够为客户提供比实体书店更丰富的选择（我们的仓库有6个足球场那么大），使客户能够随时随地地搜索和浏览。我们坚持提升客户的购物体验，并于1997年很大程度上对我们的线上书店进行优化改进。亚马逊目前能够提供优惠券、“1-Click”购物（亚马逊的“一次点击”技术可使某一网上商店的回头客只需用鼠标点击一次便可以完成商品的购买，这样顾客就不用再次输入信用卡卡号以及个人信息）、更多评论、内容、浏览选择、以及产品推荐等多种功能。同时，我们大幅降低售价，给我们的客户创造更大的价值。口碑是我们吸引新客户最有力的工具，我们也非常感激顾客给予我们的信任。重复购买和口碑，共同铸就了亚马逊在在线图书市场的领先地位。1997年，亚马逊取得了突出的成绩：销售额从1996年的1570万美元，增至1.478亿美元，同比增速高达838%。累计用户数量从18万增长到151万，同比增速为738%。重复购买率由1996年第四季度的46%，增长到1997年第4季度的58%。据MediaMetrix统计，亚马逊网站的流量排名由90名，升至20名。我们和AmericaOnline, Yahoo!, Excite, Netscape, GeoCities, AltaVista, @Home, Prodigy等巨头，都建立了长期的战略合作关系。基础设施建设1997年，为了配合我们快速增长的网站流量、销售额以及服务需求，我们努力扩大了公司基础设施：亚马逊的员工从158人大幅增至614人，管理团队也进行了扩充。仓储物流中心从之前的5万平方英尺扩张到了28.5万平方英尺，其中包括我们西雅图的仓库扩充了近70%，以及11月份在特拉华州建立的第二个仓储中心。年底，我们的库存增加到了20万种，这使得我们的服务能力有所提升。我们的现金及短期投资余额在年底达到了1.25亿美元， 得益于1997年5月份亚马逊的上市以及7500万美元银行贷款。充裕的资金保证了我们战略执行过程中更具灵活性。我们的员工过去一年的成功是我们这群极富创造力、聪明能干的员工团队共同努力的结果，我为自己是其中一员感到非常的自豪。一直以来，我们坚持在人员招聘上采取高标准的政策，今后我们将一如既往的坚持这样做，因为这是亚马逊在未来成功道路上最为重要的一个因素。在这里工作并不那么容易，当我面试求职者时，我对他们说，“你可以长时间工作、或者非常努力的工作，或者高效率工作，但是在亚马逊，这三者都很重要，缺一不可”，但是我们在努力打造一个优秀的企业，这个企业对消费者而言很重要，甚至这段经历我们可以很自豪地讲给我们的子孙们听。这意味着这件事情并不容易做到。但是幸运的是，我们拥有这样一群乐于付出、拥有牺牲精神并极富激情的团队，是他们打造出了今天的亚马逊。1998年的目标怎样通过电子商务和网络交易为我们的客户创造新的价值，我们目前仍在摸索阶段。我们的目标仍然是巩固并努力拓展我们的客户群，以及提升我们的品牌知名度。这需要我们加大对系统以及其它基础设施的持续投入，以便为我们的客户提供更便捷、更多选择的服务。我们计划将音乐纳入我们的服务内容，并且随着时间的推移，我们相信其它一些产品也将会是我们谨慎的投资对象。我们也相信，提升对海外客户的服务能力，包括缩短配送时间，以及增强更好的客户体验等，将给我们带来巨大的机遇。确切的说，一个对我们目前最具挑战性的难题，不是寻找新的品类，而在于如何确定这些投资的优先顺序。相较于亚马逊刚刚建立之日，我们现在对电子商务了解的更加透彻一些，但是我们仍然有很多东西需要学习。尽管我们对未来充满了信心，但是我们必须时刻保持警惕性。在实现我们长期愿景的路途中，我们将面对如下一些困难及挑战：那些激进的、有能力的、资金丰富的竞争对手；业务快速增长带来的挑战以及管理的风险；品类扩张的风险和地理扩张的风险；业务快速扩张带来对资金的持续、巨大需求。然而，正如我们一直所强调的，总体来看，网上书店，以及电子商务将会被证明是一个具有巨大机会的庞大市场，而且很多企业都极有可能从中获取巨大收益。我们对我们目前所做的一切感到非常满意，也对我们将来要做的事情感到兴奋。1997年是非凡的一年。我代表亚马逊向所有的客户表示感谢，感谢他们对我们业务的支持与信任，感谢每一位辛勤工作的员工。同时我们也要感谢我们的股东，亚马逊的成功离不开你们的支持和鼓励。
杰弗里·贝索斯亚马逊公司创始人、首席执行官
