In 1993 a man named Jeff Bezos started an online bookstore.
A year later he founded a company that would, to some extent, change the world.
That company was Amazon, and while at the beginning all it sold was books, Bezos had
big ideas for his online marketplace.
That’s why he called it Amazon, because the rainforest we all know by the same name
is packed with diverse species of flora and fauna.
Bezos wanted his marketplace to be similarly diverse, although with products.
By the time 2011 rolled around this marketplace was bringing in $17 billion in sales.
Amazon branched out into other areas of tech and entertainment and soon Mr. Bezos would
become the richest man on the planet.
In 2018 the yearly revenue for Amazon was a cool $232 billion.
Just how big is this company really and what would the world be like without it?
According to the website Statistica, Amazon is the third biggest company in the world
regarding market value.
It’s said to be worth $916.1 billion.
Only Microsoft and Apple are worth more, but not by much.
Well, we say not much, but still a few billion.
According to Fortune Global 500 figures, Amazon is the 13th largest company in the world in
terms of yearly revenue right now.
It’s not the largest retail company in the world regarding that revenue, because Walmart
is.
If you want to know what companies are above Amazon, just think oil and gas and automotive
and electricity.
Hopefully this helps you understand that Amazon is one very big company.
Of course you knew that, but perhaps you didn’t know just how big it is.
Think about it.
A retail company standing with giants that provide the world with power.
After power and getting around, shopping is serious business.
E-commerce has gone from strength to strength over the years, and we can bet some of you
listening to this have at one time ordered something from Amazon.
We couldn’t say that only a few years ago.
Forbes tells us that in 2018 we spent $2.86 trillion buying things online, and while there
are many companies doing e-commerce none is as successful as Amazon.
This company heads the pack, so if it were to just disappear there would be a lot of
room for its competitors.
The New York Times wrote in 2018 that “Amazon earns 49 cents of every e-commerce dollar
spent in the USA.”
Out of the top ten e-commerce companies half of them are from the USA, with four more based
in China and just one in Germany.
Forbes said look out for China, because its e-commerce market is showing staggering growth.
If Amazon were to go, would China fill the space?
Would Walmart start to focus more on online sales?
We are told that while Walmart is the great behemoth of retail, only about 2.8 percent
of its revenue comes from e-commerce.
Staying with Walmart, you might know it’s renowned for employing a lot of people.
In fact, it employs more folks than any other private company in the world.
The number is something like 2,200,000 employees.
It needs a lot of people to work in those stores.
Amazon, having its stores online can afford to not hire as many people, but it still has
a lot of employees working in warehouses, offices, etc.
It’s said it employed about 650,000 in 2018.
If the company just disappeared that would be a lot of folks out of work.
Perhaps more people will be out of work anyway once Amazon’s warehouses become more automated,
but they might also be placed somewhere else.
Some people might be glad they lost their job, because as we write this the media is
bubbling with criticism for what it calls harsh working conditions at Amazon warehouses.
Talking about robots, Amazon has around 100,000 of them employed worldwide, so they would
be out of a job.
We don’t think they’d mind, though.
So far, we have a huge space in the market to fill and a lot of people out of work.
The change would be felt in terms of people losing a job.
In 2018 on its own website Amazon said that in Seattle alone 45,000 were working for the
company.
Look at it this way, the Department of Numbers tell us that in 2019 there are 76,824 unemployed
people in the Seattle metropolitan area.
We might think about what affect no Amazon would have on folks and families in Seattle
alone, and we can tell you some amount of chaos would ensue after the Amazon disappearance.
This would happen in many other cities, not just in the U.S. but all over the world.
While you might lose your favorite place for buying books, some people would be looking
at a crisis.
You would be affected, too of course.
In 2018 it was reported that in the USA five percent of all retail sales were through Amazon.
You’d have to shop somewhere else, and that goes for Amazon’s 310 million active customers
around the world.
It’s said that in 2017 Amazon shipped more than five billion products, so that would
mean if Amazon were to go, a lot of people would be upset.
Fortune wrote that in 2018 that number increased thanks to more Amazon Prime members.
In 2019 during the Amazon Prime two day sales event the company sold 175 million products,
so that also tells you how indispensable this company has become.
Those Amazon Prime subscribers would have a shock after the disappearance.
We are told that 90 million Americans have a Prime subscription, but Forbes wrote that
by 2022 there will be 56 million Amazon Prime Video subscribers in the U.S., and 122 million
worldwide.
Well, that’s not going to happen now.
So, in those burgeoning markets of Japan, Germany, and the UK, there will be many people
left without their subscription.
Then there are the third-party sellers on Amazon, some of whom make a tidy profit from
their business.
More than 50 percent of sales on Amazon come from these people, so they would have to look
for a new job, too.
Even people that don’t actually buy something on Amazon use the platform just to check out
prices.
We are told in the USA nine out of ten people use Amazon to check prices of things.
This would all stop.
People who just visit the site or perhaps buy on the site are aplenty.
In 2019 it’s said that every month 206 million visit the site from around the planet.
This equates to around $410 million dollars a day in revenue, or $283,000 a minute, or
$4,722 a second.
In terms of where Amazon is based, it now operates in the countries of the United States,
the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Spain, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Australia, Japan,
China, India and Mexico.
This is only where it operates, but it ships to over 100 countries.
If Amazon were to go, many people around the world be affected.
As for just inside the USA and the millennial generation, well, they love Amazon more than
anyone.
According to a survey cited by the New York Post, 77 percent of millennials would rather
stop drinking alcohol for a year and 44 percent would give up making love altogether for a
year rather than give up buying stuff on Amazon.
Does that mean if Amazon were to go they’d start drinking more and getting it on?
On top of all that, people and companies using Amazon Web Services would be in a fix, as
would people who rely on their Amazon Alexa.
By 2021, Amazon said it hopes to have 3,000 cashierless Stores, so that would also be
off the table.
And finally, you would be able to write relentless.com into your browser and not be sent to Amazon’s
website.
Yep, Bezos took that domain name.
So how would you feel about a world with no Amazon?
Tell us in the comments.
Then go watch our other video a “World Without the Amazon Rainforest.”
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.