Stars set sail across borders: How big is the global e-commerce empire Amazon?

Amazon was established in 1994. Amazon first entered the book industry. In 1999, Amazon entered the 3C category of home appliances. From 2002 to 2004, it began to penetrate clothing, jewelry, beauty, daily necessities and other categories. At present, Amazon has become the most influential leading e-commerce company in the United States and even the world. Everyone in China knows that Alibaba is an e-commerce giant. If you compare Alibaba as a reference, you can know how big Amazon is.

Amazon’s revenue in 2019 reached US$280.5 billion, and its net profit increased to US$11.6 billion, while Alibaba’s revenue in fiscal year 2019 was US$56.1 billion, which means that Amazon’s revenue is about 5 times that of Alibaba. At the same time, Amazon's current market value is 1.5 trillion US dollars, while Alibaba's current market value is 672.2 billion US dollars, which means that Amazon is about 2.5 times that of Alibaba in terms of market value.

1. Business Sectors Involved by Amazon

In terms of business sectors, Amazon includes: retail business (both online e-commerce and offline physical stores), hardware production, cloud computing services, content production and logistics services. At the same time, Amazon is also continuously acquiring various companies across industries, acquiring food, clothing and accessories companies to expand its own categories, acquiring community websites to attract customer traffic, and acquiring media and entertainment companies. At the same time, it also invested in artificial intelligence and industrial Internet business.

2. The scope of Amazon's global business

Amazon has established 17 major sites around the world and more than 100 global operation centers.

Amazon's advantages in cross-border e-commerce business lie in its rich international sites, rich brand partnerships and huge cross-border logistics system. Judging from the global distribution of Amazon's warehousing area and the number of warehouses, Amazon has now entered 21 countries around the world. Amazon in 1999 was nothing like it is today. At the time, e-commerce was still a relatively small industry, and Amazon was just a book-selling e-commerce business. Now, Amazon is the top 3 listed company in the world by market value, and its founder, Bezos, is the richest man in the world. It provides a large number of products to users around the world.

By some numbers, Amazon has created the largest corporate living quarter in the United States in Seattle. Recently, Amazon announced that it will spend $5 billion to develop a second corporate headquarters somewhere in North America, which is expected to create 50,000 jobs. With a market capitalization larger than all U.S. retailers combined, investments in infrastructure and supply chain management make Amazon the most valuable retailer in the United States.