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In 1999, the year after Amazon entered the UK, the company was losing about $300m a year after more than four years in operation. The group only recorded a full-year profit in 2003/4, and even today it could be argued that Amazon’s profits are low relative to its sales.
But the company’s ruthless focus on price and service helped it rapidly to grab market share in the UK, taking as much as 5% of British book sales in its first two years, according to industry insiders. Home-grown booksellers such as W H Smith and Waterstone’s struggled to match its service and were unconvinced they could really make money online. Unwilling to throw millions of pounds at a format that formed just a tiny portion of its business, aterstone’s decided its best option was to let the US firm run its online operation. Brian McBride joined Amazon UK as Managing Director in January 2006. He has over 25 years experience in senior management positions in the high-tech industry including T-Mobile, Dell and IBM.

At the time, UK booksellers did not have the centralised warehouse facilities necessary for home delivery and that has only just begun to change in the past 18 months. Amazon in contrast has two million sq ft over four warehouses in the UK— and just under a quarter of that space is still devoted to books.

What is clear now is that Waterstone’s and Borders UK left Amazon in charge of their online stores for too long, allowing Amazon to take a massive share of the increasingly important web-based market, while their relationships with potential customers went under-exploited.
It is only recently that Amazon has faced real competition online as both Waterstone’s and Borders have taken back the operation of their websites to exploit their "multi-channel" service while newer entrants, particularly Play.com and the supermarkets, are also snapping at Amazon’s heels.

Meanwhile, the gradual expansion of the range of goods offered by Amazon, from jewellery to vacuum cleaners, means that books, once Amazon’s raison d’être, are slowly becoming a smaller part of a general "online department store." There is an argument that, as books become a less important part of the overall business, it will begin to lose market share to rivals who are finally getting their act together.

Investec’s Jeary says that as competition improves, it is almost inevitable Amazon’s market share in books will be eroded. However, Giles says it will be difficult for anyone to usurp Amazon’s strong market position online.

"They are the largest online retailer, they have got huge economies of scale and they are brilliant at what they do," he says. "The offer and the service are fantastic, while they are not remotely complacent."

McBride is confident Amazon will hold its own. "The market share we have is still not that large and we will continue to gain small fractions of share as we grow," he says.

He believes the "noise and attention" that Amazon has created around books is one of the reasons that the market as a whole continues to grow, despite its great maturity. McBride says the launch of the Kindle and the development of such new services as same-day delivery, downloadable e-books and audiobooks will all work to take Amazon forward.
He is relaxed about the fact that the Kindle will not launch in the UK until next year, saying e-books remain a small part of the market, and getting it right is better than being first.

"The future is more fast evolution than revolution," McBride says. "We will continue to enhance the website and we don’t think the physical books market is going to disappear in the next five years."

One thing McBride says that Amazon will not do is open high street stores, but beyond that the company will continue to adapt to consumer demands. "Going forward, consumers— younger consumers—want to get material in different ways and we want to be positioned with the technology to meet that.

"Whether it’s delivering physical books from the publisher or books on demand or on CD, ultimately we want to get the story to the customer and how we get it there is almost of secondary importance," he says. Amazon may have defined internet book retailing already. Its future may be built on redefining the book.

Brian McBride

It is safe to say that Brian McBride, head of the UK’s biggest online book retailer, is more of a gadget-geek than a bibliophile.

"I’m a holiday reader. I like thrillers and simple reads," the softly spoken Scot admits. A lifelong Celtic FC fan, he is currently engrossed in Martin Greig’s The Zen of Naka (Mainstream), a book on the Japanese and Celtic footballer, Shunsuke Nakamura, who has become a cult hero in the green and white parts of Glasgow.

That may horrify those publishers who spent last week enmeshed in the highbrow world of the Frankfurt Book Fair, but McBride happily admits he was not brought into Amazon for his love of books or even his knowledge of retail.

"I came in to prepare and build a business for high growth," he says. "The business will have just about doubled in size since I have been here. It needed broader management, more skills and new people. I was there to build, not to push for better terms with publishers."
Since arriving in January 2006, McBride, who has a seat on Celtic’s board, has built his own premiership team to help transform Amazon UK from an online book retailer into a giant department store.

In the past two years McBride has brought in former Phaidon Press m.d. Chris North as vice-president of media, Wendy Mansell from Gillette as HR director, and Shaun McCabe from Homebase as financial director. McBride says he is confident he will announce more big-hitting recruits to the team later this month.

Blue-chip background
McBride himself, who came from T-Mobile’s UK business, is part of the professionalisation of Amazon after City analysts insisted the e-tailer must move on from its roots as an internet start-up, prone to diving into new markets without sufficient focus on the bottom line.

His background is almost entirely in blue-chip electronics companies, including Xerox, IBM and Dell before joining T-Mobile in 2003. Certainly, his interest in gadgetry ("I always have to have the latest, fastest camera," he says) must have helped him to get to grips with the changes required to drive Amazon’s foray into toys, electronics, kitchenware and shoes over the past few years.

T-Mobile did have 120 shops, but McBride says they were not a central part of his role. He says: "The one thing I had in my background all the way through which is relevant to Amazon is that I have always been customer-focused."

While he admits he had a lot to learn about retail, McBride says that his background in customer service is well suited to Amazon’s obsession with listening and responding to its shoppers. The latest website incarnation, for example, was partly built on the back of customer suggestions, and McBride is set on constantly improving delivery options as a means of increasing sales.

However, McBride says he can claim no real credit for Amazon’s website or growth profile in the UK. "I came into a business where nothing was broken, there was nothing to fix. It was all about helping to prepare for growth, which is a lovely problem to have," he says.

Crunch? What crunch?
As the entire banking system shudders and consumers fear for their jobs and their houses, is it possible that Amazon UK can continue its growth rate of more than 30%?

"We are not expecting a huge impact from the credit crunch," McBride says. "We are obviously cautious. But when money gets tight people become more price-conscious and go online, so we still think it will come out OK. People still want books, holiday reads and Christmas books. They will cut back on luxuries, but books are almost a staple."

He adds: "People are buying and reading more books, a product that’s been around for hundreds of years. Harry Potter has been good for the industry and brought youngsters into reading, while Amazon has made books current for younger people."

Amazon will also be helped by the continuing switch to buying online. Gradually, books will naturally form a smaller part of Amazon’s overall turnover, as sales of "media"—which includes CDs, computer games and DVDs as well as books—are growing by 10% to 15% compared to a 50%-plus rise in sales of other merchandise new to Amazon, such as footwear and homewares.

But anyone hoping, or fearing, that Amazon will be so dazzled by its new markets that it will forget about books will be sadly disappointed, according to McBride. "When I last checked there were eight million books you could buy on Amazon," he says. The business has plenty of plans to up its game on delivery options and website services, the latest being video reviews.

Then of course there is next year’s planned launch of Amazon’s e-book reader, the Kindle, which, despite his love of technology, McBride says he has yet to get his hands on. "I will only get it when the great British public gets it," he says, almost ruefully. McBride suggests that in time the Kindle could have the same impact on the book market as the iPod had on music. If true, the Scot’s inner gadget geek may yet prove the key to Amazon’s, and perhaps the book market’s, future.

标签：Amazon, Jeary, Jeff Bezos, Kindle