Pioneering spirit, winning strategy, customer obsession ... this is the recipe that Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, the leading e-commerce sites, the service now provides digital book.
"The paper book is old technology than five hundred years, which has many drawbacks which one is accustomed, until they discover something better!"
Jeff Bezos, the boss of American merchant Amazon site, share a laugh ogre, which contrasts strangely with his small stature and his intense gaze. So the man who shook Saint-Germain-des-Prés ...
On 8 October, the group launched in France in fact its already ultra-dominant United States Kindle digital reading light, and this in Germany as well as Britain.
"It's hard to go back to paper"
The Kindle will he get the e-book of the tiny niche market in which vegetate in France? Possible ... "When you used the Kindle for a while, it is very difficult to go back to paper," said Jeff Bezos.
"Now, if I am forced to read a paper book, I realize that I can not change the font size, I have not all the time with me, it is heavy, it not automatically remembers my last page ... "
A huge online bazaar
Amazon boss is a born salesman. In fifteen years, the former banker has made its online shop the world's most powerful e-commerce. A huge online bazaar, where tens of millions of consumers on the planet control books, movies, music, electronics, dishes, diapers, toys or clothes ...
But Bezos is not just a vendor. He was responsible for most of the concepts that have made the success of Internet commerce: low price guarantee easy returns, the opportunity to purchase "one-click". In short, a service really focused on the client, with free shipping in two days for the most faithful.
"2 million companies sell on Amazon"
Amazon, which began as a bookseller, has methodically expanded its range of products. In 2000, the group has even opened its "market place" with its competitors.
A real revolution not only Bezos calls to keep private and professional shop on Amazon.com, but it also puts its warehouses and logistics in their service, a modest commission.
What blew its turnover (40% in 2010), and helped to improve the quality and competitiveness of the home offers. "Today, 2 million companies sell on Amazon," said Sebastian Gunningham, head of the division. "About 30% of the products sold on the site come from outside vendors."
Amazon scares players edition
Amazon, which is a technology group, was then the first to embark on the niche explosion of web services, this time with the computing power of its "firm" of computer servers to service external companies (cloud computing).
Three U.S. titans of the Net, Amazon is - by far - who are most afraid of the big players in publishing.
"Google uses the book to drive traffic, Apple to sell its machines. Amazon, however, put it at the heart of its business," said a French publisher.
Jeff Bezos, who began by ship books himself from his house in Seattle, now controls between 20% and 25% of the book market in the United States, but more than 80% of book sales on the internet! Become a giant online bookstore, he played the pioneers in the virtual book.
The same comfortable reading on paper
In spring 2007, in fact, Bezos addresses the digital launch of its own reading light, Kindle, the E Ink technology allows the same ease of reading on paper. Rocket eBook to SoftBook all previous attempts had failed.
White, ugly and expensive, the Kindle 1 was greeted with sarcasm ... Four versions of machines later, nobody laughs!
Light, easy and no thicker than a pencil, small reading light gray mouse can now contain 3500 works with a battery life of two months. A real mobile library.