Amazon is one of the largest Companies in the world and was founded in July 1994 and is soon 26 years old. The Company has revenues per annum in excess of $75b and a Market Cap of $1.3T, T is for Trillion and $1.3T is 1,300 billion dollars. The Founder Jeff Bezos even are settling a 4% share of the Company in his divorce upon his ex wife still owns 11% of the Company yes in excess of around $130 billion. Can you just imagine for one moment Mr Bezos in1994, who may well have written the below mail to his Bank.
Dear Mr Bank Manager
I’m thinking of sending people books from my garage. It’s a low cost building and if I send enough of them out I’ll make money. Could you please lend me $1000 to paint the garage door and whitewash the interior. My wife will do the painting and I will put the books in postal brown envelopes. Of the $1000 , $200 will be for stamps. If my garage gets full of books the next door neighbour garage says I can rent his for $10 a weeks
Please call me to let me know if you can lend this.
Yours
Mr and Mrs Bezos ( two of the futures most wealthiest people in the world ) June 1994
I’m sure many turned down Mr Bezos but he has defied the laws of gravity in his achievement and shown once again what can be achieved in the United States of America. Bezos has proven that it’s the simplest of ideas that obvious choice that escapes the minds of many as we often try to navigate the complex path when the road to success is a broad boulevard. Amazon now ship in excess of 2.5 billion packages per annum and most of the goods are wrapped in cardboard. Cardboard is wood fibres pressed together from wood pulp to a certain thickness and we see more and more of the stuff as Amazon grow. In my house I sometimes fall over the stuff and my trips to the recycling centre have become a regular stop off in my life.
These journeys, endless journeys got me thinking. Who makes cardboard I need to buy some shares in the Company. I then found that Westrock Inc are one of the largest with a Market Cap of in excess of $8b. I don’t own any of their shares as I write but they are trading at half of their value some two years ago. It’s just a piece of lateral thinking but if the share price does flat pack one of these days then it’s certainly worth looking at. The other simple idea is delivery and the likes of Amazon are now very focussed on perfecting ‘ last mile delivery ‘ , that last leg of the race to get that cardboard through the door, all our doors. That is a nut to crack and whatever technology or person can crack that will be on to their road to their fortune.
Wood of course comes from trees and though we can recycle , trees have become more than just the lungs of the earth. It’s good that despite football pitch removal in that other Amazon region we are continuing to plant more trees. There are now just over 3 trillion trees in the World and about 10% of these in the Amazon Basin but we still need more, as does Westrock and Amazon.
I can see the day coming when the Market Cap of Amazon may well match in dollars each tree so we need to keep planting. The race is on and with online shopping now accounting for over one third of all retail there’s a long way for Amazon to go. Now they trade in everything and books are not the only thing leaving the garage these days.
Everything starts somewhere, the seed of the tree, the seed of an idea and we need to nurture both as there’s more shoppers being born every minute and that is just another seed. Keep thinking your success is just a seed but whatever it is get planting because everything has to start somewhere.
qbitblogger 