From the beginning of Amazon, the largest online retailer today, there were high hopes for its future development. Jeff Bezos founded this company in 1994 originally labeling it as Cadabra. Not much time passed before Bezos renamed the company Amazon, what we all recognize it as today. Since his graduation from the prestigious Princeton University as part of the class of 1986 Bezos held high aspirations which translated well into the birth of his online retailer. As many other of the greats like Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple, Bezos abandoned his current job (working for a New York hedge fund) and took to his garage to bring Amazon to life on the World Wide Web.

Before you could say “add to cart” Amazon was soaring up through the stock market, and now it is the 56th largest company in America and the 15th largest retailer. Quite a “behemoth of American business” as Time Magazine puts it. With the original intention of selling novels Amazon branched out into almost every sector you can think of. In fact, Amazon has even expanded into the produce and grocery sector and has been one of the first to pursue alternatives to delivering products via drones! Let’s explore further into Amazon and find out what they CAN’T do.

Drones?

That’s right, if you haven’t heard, keep your eye in the sky when waiting for your next delivery: Amazon has been flight testing it’s “5th and 6th generation aerial vehicles, and (they) are in the design phase on generations seven and eight” (therichest). This would most definitely put Amazon far above any other retailer, I mean who else is planning to deliver your products with drones! These drones would mean the capability for delivery anytime anywhere.

Cloud Services

Yet another field many could not have envisioned Amazon stepping into is the world of cloud services. According the NPR, Amazon actually is the largest cloud service provider in the United States. This brings in nearly 3.8 billion dollars for the online retail powerhouse. Whenever you stream Netflix, use music via Spotify, or Amazon’s own web services you are using its cloud.

Amazon… mart? (They have groceries)

That’s right, if anyone is going to expand across sectors from online retail with electronics to selling produce and other goods, it’s Amazon. The revenue and sales of the grocery industry is something that caught Bezos’s eyes. Nearly 600 billion dollars in supermarkets in 2012 was something this CEO could not pass up.

These are only three of Amazon’s expansion projects beyond its originally intended field of books. It is no doubt that this online retailing business is at the top, but the aspirations of Bezos leave room for even further growth and success. Keep in mind this business did not reach such high revenue overnight. Jeff Bezos knew this would have to be a long term procedure, saying “We’re going to be unprofitable for a long time. And that’s our strategy”. Before he knew it, Amazon struck a full year profit in 2003 (INC). It may be mind blowing at times to consider how Amazon got this far, but it ultimately all stems from  one main factor: Amazon with Jeff Bezos at the helm managed to expand from selling books to becoming an e- commerce giant. With a rapidly changing economy anything can happen for the thousands of corporations in the world marketplace. One thing for sure is you are going to want to continue to keep an eye on Amazon and all of its groundbreaking transformations.