02 Jeff Bezos

Bezos’ original vision to create the world’s biggest book shop has not only been achieved and surpassed, but Amazon can now provide extraordinary choice in almost every category and is pushing forward to try and dominate fashion, food and ebooks.

Bezos, who is well known for a long and loud laugh, is anything if not serious in his continued dominance of the ecommerce space.

And while the UK arm of the business has some serious ecommerce players, it is Bezos’ ambition, innovation and influence over the whole business that makes him so powerful when it comes to the wider industry.

With its purchase of fashion ecommerce business Zappos last year and its push into ebooks with the Kindle e-reader, Amazon is taking on different markets and retailers making it a threat to a wide array of UK online and high street companies.

Earlier this year, Amazon.co.uk entered the competitive online grocery market to mixed reviews. However, Amazon insists that this is not trying to be the place to do your weekly shop

at the moment, although this is likely to be a long-term aim if it can get its supplier relationships and its offer right. The fact it launched this the same week that Ocado began its investor road show before its float was passed off as merely coincidental.

Javari, Amazon’s standalone shoe and accessories site, hopes to bring Amazon more clout in the competitive online fashion world, currently dominated by Asos.

The Kindle is Amazon’s major new focus and on its US site says that more ebooks were sold in its second quarter than hardback books; 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardbacks sold on the site. Bezos is really championing this technology but Amazon will always insist this is not the death of the printed word, just an easy, modern alternative.

It is hard to imagine Amazon without Bezos at the helm and as the company continues to grow sales − it last reported global revenues were up 41% − it remains the benchmark for all online retail businesses.