The Amazon billionaire’s heavy-lift rocket is poised for its first spaceflight. If it succeeds, it will give satellite operators and the Pentagon a long-desired alternative to SpaceX—and at a cheaper price, Forbes reveals.



In2021, Elon Musk trolled Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, mocking his rival’s slow progress toward launching a rocket into space. “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol,” he<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1386825367948644352" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&nbsp;wrote</a>&nbsp;on Twitter.



Now, almost 25 years after Bezos started the company, Blue Origin is on the brink of clapping back. Its powerful New Glenn rocket is at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center for its inaugural launch, which could come as soon as early morning Monday.



Plenty of people in the space industry and government are cheering for it to succeed – and to end SpaceX’s near monopoly on lofting American satellites into orbit.



“The space industry likes having choices,” said Caleb Henry, an analyst at Quilty Space. “And it doesn&#8217;t have that today. It just has SpaceX.”



And Blue Origin is selling launches at a price per satellite that’s significantly better than SpaceX, a former employee told&nbsp;Forbes.



The launch attempt comes less than two weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House. During his first term, the former president attacked Bezos over negative coverage in the Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Now Trump, with Musk at his right hand, is promising a shakeup in government spending and regulation that could tilt the playing field for the commercial space industry — and threaten some of Blue Origin’s government contracts.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-animal-spirits">ANIMAL SPIRITS</h3>



Bezos has positioned Blue Origin as the slow and steady alternative to SpaceX’s “move fast and fail quickly” ethos. Its motto is “gradatim ferociter,” Latin for “step by step, ferociously,” and its logo features two tortoises. So far the tortoise has been soundly beaten by SpaceX’s hare.



Over the past decade, SpaceX ramped up its launch cadence to unprecedented levels while its competition was largely sidelined. The old heavyweights of space launch — the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and Europe’s Arianespace — struggled with delays in developing new rockets, and Western sanctions removed Russian rockets as an option. SpaceX’s Falcon rockets propelled cargo to orbit 133 times in 2024, with one failure, the vast majority of the 145 launches attempted in the U.S. last year and more than half of the 263 worldwide, according to space activity tracker<a href="https://planet4589.org/space/papers/space24.pdf" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&nbsp;Jonathan McDowell</a>.



But New Glenn, first announced in 2016, promises to be a fierce competitor. Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, it’s a two-stage heavy lift workhorse, with the first stage designed to return to earth for reuse. But according to Blue Origin, a larger nose cone gives New Glenn twice the cargo volume of Falcon 9, and its powerful engines are designed to propel double the payload mass.



And Blue Origin is pricing to give customers more bang for the buck than SpaceX, according to a former employee who now works for a competitor who spoke to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;on the condition of anonymity.



Blue Origin is charging roughly $110 million per launch, he said, compared to about $70 million for a Falcon 9 – effectively offering to carry twice as many satellites for roughly 50% more money.



Blue Origin didn’t respond to a request for comment from&nbsp;Forbes.



Blue Origin&#8217;s New Glenn rocket, which stands 32 stories tall and is designed to launch 45 tons of payload into orbit, is pictured during a hotfire test at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Dec. 27.Blue Origin



New Glenn is already proving attractive to companies building large constellations of small satellites for low-Earth orbit, particularly as those satellites have gotten larger, said Henry.



Blue Origin has won contracts to use it to launch satellites for all of the major constellations, except, of course, for SpaceX’s Starlink. That includes AST Mobile, which is developing a network to provide cellular service from space. The company has said New Glenn can carry eight of its Block 2 satellites, which will be the largest yet put in low-Earth orbit. Falcon 9 can carry just four.



And Bezos’ Amazon.com is leaning heavily on Blue Origin to realize its plans for its Kuiper satellite network. Blue Origin is slated to launch at least 23% of the constellation and potentially as much as half. Amazon expects to pay Blue Origin $2.7 billion through 2028, it said in a financial filing last year.



The U.S. government is also eager for another option to launch its intelligence and communications satellites. In June the Defense Department picked Blue Origin, along with SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, to compete for up to $5.6 billion worth of launches through 2029.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-money-out">MONEY OUT</h3>



It’s welcome revenue after years of heavy spending to build the company. On the New Glenn program alone, Blue Origin has spent on the order of $10 billion, the former employee estimated. Apart from a few NASA contracts, that money has come from the deep pockets of Bezos, who has committed to use the vast fortune he’s made from Amazon to realize his boyhood space dreams.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates his net worth at $233 billion, a distant second in the world to Musk’s $416 billion.



While it’s taken a quarter century for Blue Origin to take its first shot at space, it has notched impressive achievements on the way, while building infrastructure for mass rocket launches that SpaceX only put together gradually after reaching orbit. The company developed a powerful rocket engine, the Be-4, that’s powered two successful launches of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket. With its reusable New Shepard rocket, which is designed to bring tourists to the edge of space, Blue Origin has become the only rocket company besides SpaceX to pull off the trick of landing its first stage. And it has built up manufacturing facilities expected to produce over 100 Be-4 engines in 2025, and multiple boosters to support a pace of 12 launches a year.



“It&#8217;s easy to be a little flip about, ‘SpaceX has done so much and Blue Origin has done little,’ but it&#8217;s nuanced,” said Carissa Christensen, CEO of the space consulting firm BryceTech.



A successful launch would be powerful validation for Blue Origin, but the attempt comes against a cloudy political backdrop. Trump has tasked Musk with leading an effort to chop government spending and regulation. A relaxation of rules in the heavily regulated space industry would help all participants, but competitors fear<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2024/11/12/in-trumps-space-race-musks-spacex-is-a-sure-bet/">&nbsp;preferential treatment for SpaceX</a>.



Exhibit A: Trump’s nominee to run NASA, billionaire Jared Isaacman. His company Shift4 Payments has invested in SpaceX, and Isaacman has bankrolled two private spaceflights on Falcon rockets.



Last March, Isaacman&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/rookisaacman/status/1767893365541032333" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">questioned</a>&nbsp;the wisdom of NASA’s decision to fund the development of redundant lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, in case one faltered.



But Bezos has professed confidence that Musk won’t use his influence in the Trump administration to benefit SpaceX at Blue Origin’s expense.



“I take at face value what has been said, which is that [Musk] is not going to use his political power to advantage his own companies or to disadvantage his competitors,” Bezos said in December at a&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;conference.



Bezos, in any event, is looking far beyond the next four years. He wants Blue Origin to drive the creation of an off-world economy where manufacturing and mining is done in in space, and the “Earth will be zoned residential and light industry.” Someday he thinks that will make Blue Origin a bigger business than Amazon, he said at the&nbsp;Times&nbsp;event. But it’s all predicated on bringing down the cost of reaching space, starting with New Glenn.



“We know how to travel to space. We know how to land on the Moon. We need to be able to do it a hundred times cheaper,” Bezos told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsuqSn7ifpU" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">space YouTuber Tim Dodd</a>&nbsp;in September. “That’s what will really open the heavens to humanity.”

New York Times Holds Annual DealBook Summit

With New Glenn Launch, Bezos Looks To Break Musk’s Stranglehold On Space

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Almost half a million power bank chargers sold exclusively on Amazon over the last six years have been recalled after dozens of reports of the product expanding, igniting, melting, overheating or smoking while in use.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/Charmast-Power-Banks-Recalled-Due-to-Fire-and-Burn-Hazards-Sold-by-Charmast-Exclusively-on-Amazon-com" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">recalled portable chargers</a>&nbsp;are powered by lithium-ion batteries and were sold under the brand name Charmast exclusively on Amazon for between $14 and $25 from December 2018 through September 2024.



Charmast has received 44 reports of the recalled power banks expanding, igniting, melting, overheating or smoking, and four customers reported receiving burns or blisters from the defective products, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.



The company&#8217;s recall says the products should be disposed of through local recycling centers for damaged or defective lithium batteries and should not be thrown out in regular garbage or in used battery recycling boxes because their defect poses a safety risk.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-here-s-how-customers-can-contact-charmast-for-a-full-refund">Here’s How Customers Can Contact Charmast For A Full Refund</h2>



Customers can call Charmast from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. EST Monday through Friday at 929-636-0293, email rcus@charmast.com or visit the company’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.charmast.com/pages/recall-info-page" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">recall website</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-which-power-bank-chargers-have-been-recalled">Which Power Bank Chargers Have Been Recalled?</h2>



The defective products have “Model: W1056” printed on the back and were sold in black, blue, green, mint, pink and white.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



Lithium-ion batteries contain flammable materials and can overheat, leading to fire or explosion. The batteries can&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nyc.gov/assets/fdny/downloads/pdf/codes/dangers-of-lithium-ion-batteries.pdf" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">re-ignite</a>&nbsp;without warning, even days after an initial fire has been put out, and can&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dfes.wa.gov.au/hazard-information/fire-in-the-home/lithium-ion-batteries#:~:text=Why%20do%20lithium%2Dion%20batteries,treated%20as%20a%20LiB%20fire." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">release</a>&nbsp;toxic, flammable and explosive gases. Last year, at least seven people were&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/09/tech/lithium-ion-battery-fires/index.html#:~:text=The%20problem%20with%20lithium%20batteries&amp;text=%E2%80%9CSo%20when%20a%20fire%20does,these%20devices%2C%E2%80%9D%20Kerber%20said." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">injured</a>&nbsp;in a five-alarm fire in New York City caused by a defective lithium-ion scooter battery, and the New York City Fire Department&nbsp;<a href="https://ul.org/news/ul-research-institutes-ul-standards-engagement-and-ul-solutions-commend-new-york-city-council" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">said</a>&nbsp;it responded to more than 200 e-scooter and e-bike fires—resulting in six deaths—in 2022. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said it&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2023/CPSC-Calls-on-Manufacturers-to-Comply-with-Safety-Standards-for-Battery-Powered-Products-to-Reduce-the-Risk-of-Injury-and-Death" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">received reports</a>&nbsp;from 39 states of at least 208 fires or overheating events that caused a reported 19 fatalities from Jan, 1, 2021 through Nov. 28, 2022.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">Crucial Quote</h2>



“Lithium batteries are generally safe and unlikely to fail, but only so long as there are no defects and the batteries are not damaged or mistreated,” Steve Kerber, vice president and executive director of Underwriters Laboratory’s Fire Safety Research Institute,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/09/tech/lithium-ion-battery-fires/index.html#:~:text=The%20problem%20with%20lithium%20batteries&amp;text=%E2%80%9CSo%20when%20a%20fire%20does,these%20devices%2C%E2%80%9D%20Kerber%20said." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">told CNN</a>. “The more batteries that surround us the more incidents we will see.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">Tangent</h2>



The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported several other recalls Thursday, including one impacting about 63,000 batteries used in lawnmowers and other outdoor tools.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/Chervon-North-America-Recalls-SKIL-40V-50Ah-Lithium-Ion-Batteries-for-SKIL-Lawnmowers-and-Outdoor-Tools-Due-to-Fire-and-Burn-Hazard" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Chevron North America</a>&nbsp;has recalled SKIL 40V 5.0 Ah Lithium-Ion Batteries after more than 100 reports of the batteries overheating, melting, smoking and lighting on fire, including eight reports of minor burns and/or smoke inhalation and 49 reports of related property damage. Also recalled Thursday were 85,000 silicone&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/Melii-Baby-Silicone-Spoons-for-Babies-Recalled-Due-to-Choking-Hazard-Imported-by-Melii-Baby" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">baby spoon sets&nbsp;</a>from Melii Baby and about 500 Elongdi magnetic&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/Magnetic-Building-Sticks-Sets-Recalled-Due-to-Ingestion-Hazard-Violation-of-Federal-Regulations-for-Toy-Magnets-Sold-Exclusively-on-Amazon-com-by-Elongdi" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">building stick sets</a>&nbsp;sold on Amazon.

Smartphones being Charge with Portable Power Banks

Power Bank Chargers Sold On Amazon Recalled After They Melted, Caught Fire

Amazon announces its expansion with Amazon.co.za next year, focusing on emerging markets.



In a move highlighting their growing focus on emerging markets, Amazon recently announced its plans to launch Amazon.co.za in South Africa in 2024, sending ripples through the online retail and software space in the country.



&#8220;We look forward to launching Amazon.co.za in South Africa, providing local sellers, brand owners, and entrepreneurs — small and large — the opportunity to grow their business with Amazon,&#8221; said Robert Koen, General Manager of the sub-Saharan Africa region for Amazon, in a press release today.



This expansion into South Africa underscores the company&#8217;s belief in the untapped retail potential of the region and the developing world more broadly, announcing in 2022 its plans to also launch in Belgium, Chile, Colombia, and Nigeria. The South African launch has not been without its challenges.



The company reportedly faced legal challenges to its development of the Amazon Development Centre in Cape Town by indigenous peoples but was greenlit late last year.



As a pioneer in e-commerce, Amazon&#8217;s entry is an endorsement of South Africa&#8217;s growing online retail space. With more than 60% of Amazon’s global store sales coming from independent sellers, the platform aims to empower South Africa’s small and medium-sized businesses by providing a variety of tools, educational resources, and a vast consumer base.



Local companies like African Mamas Crafts and Reader&#8217;s Warehouse are already excited about leveraging Amazon&#8217;s platform for growth. This suggests that Amazon sees South Africa as more than just a market — it&#8217;s a landscape ripe for collaborations and partnerships.



However, Amazon&#8217;s journey to launch in South Africa hasn&#8217;t been a cakewalk. The company now faces competition from established local online retailers like Takealot.com, as well as challenges related to South Africa&#8217;s infrastructure, employment issues, and economic landscape.



In terms of leveraging local resources, Amazon is not entirely a newcomer to South Africa. Through its Amazon Web Services (AWS) subsidiary, the tech giant already has a significant presence in the country, including development and support centers in Cape Town. AWS recently launched the first international AWS Skills Center in Cape Town, providing cloud computing education. These initiatives could serve as foundational blocks for Amazon’s e-commerce operations, helping the company better understand and serve the local market.



Amazon&#8217;s South African entry could also pave the way for the introduction of ancillary services and products. According to reports, the company plans to offer its popular Prime loyalty program, featuring expedited delivery and access to Prime Video and Twitch. Given that Prime has been a major driver of customer loyalty and engagement in other markets, its introduction could significantly alter the competitive dynamics of the South African e-commerce landscape. Leveraging its existing AWS infrastructure and partnerships with local businesses, Amazon is positioning itself not just as a retailer but as a significant contributor to South Africa&#8217;s digital ecosystem. As Koen emphasized, the launch aims to provide &#8220;great value and a convenient shopping experience&#8221; while opening new avenues for local businesses to flourish.

Amazon Fulfilment Centre Tilbury

Online Retail Giant Amazon Confirms 2024 Launch In South Africa, Also Aiming To Grow SMEs

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-as-companies-increase-their-reliance-on-cloud-providers-to-store-vital-data-a-rash-of-aws-outages-has-riled-clients-with-some-looking-to-hedge-their-bets-with-access-to-other-platforms">As companies increase their reliance on cloud providers to store vital data, a rash of AWS outages has riled clients, with some looking to hedge their bets with access to other platforms.</h2>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



When Amazon Web Services&nbsp;suffered its third major outage in a matter of weeks last month – affecting millions of people, from Citi Bike riders to Disney+ viewers and Delta Airlines customers – almost none of its corporate clients expressed frustration publicly.&nbsp;



But within boardrooms and corner offices, the most recent outage on December 22 was the latest reminder of the risks of relying on a single cloud vendor. “The AWS outages were a black eye for the company as more enterprises race to the cloud,” says Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities.&nbsp;



AWS has long been the cloud leader, holding 41% of the global cloud infrastructure market, and generated $16 billion revenue in the third quarter of 2021. Though as a first-mover cloud vendor since it launched in 2006 – becoming essential for small and medium businesses looking to outsource their networks – AWS has been fending off tough competition from Microsoft, which Gartner says grew twice as fast as AWS in 2020 as it moved to secure large corporations. Microsoft doesn’t break out its public cloud revenue, but the most recent comparable figures from Gartner show that in 2020, Azure generated $12 billion revenue from public cloud infrastructure services, compared to $26 billion by AWS. (Google Cloud trailed at $4 billion).



Now that outages have reinforced the risks of relying on one vendor, signs that corporations are increasingly turning to Microsoft are starting to emerge. Research published this month by Bank of America shows that 23% of chief information officers at 185 large companies around the world expect to spend most of their cloud budgets over the next 12 months on Microsoft Azure, compared with 11% for Amazon AWS.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-global-public-cloud-infrastructure-services-market-share-2017-v-2020">Global Public Cloud Infrastructure Services Market Share 2017&nbsp;v&nbsp;2020</h3>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Screenshot-2022-01-27-at-14.16.25-1024x418.png" alt="" class="wp-image-54084" width="709" height="289" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Screenshot-2022-01-27-at-14.16.25-1024x418.png 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Screenshot-2022-01-27-at-14.16.25-300x122.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Screenshot-2022-01-27-at-14.16.25-768x313.png 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Screenshot-2022-01-27-at-14.16.25.png 1128w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 709px) 100vw, 709px" /></figure></div>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



A spokesperson for AWS contended that the company has a better track record of reliability than any other cloud provider. “Pioneering this level of reliability at the scale of AWS is an unprecedented engineering accomplishment,” the spokesperson said in an email. “However, we understand how critical our services are for customers and their end users, and we&#8217;re not satisfied unless performance is indistinguishable from perfect.”&nbsp;



AWS also said it believed clients should stick to multiple cloud regions within AWS, rather than entering multi-cloud agreements with other vendors to manage exposure to outages. “A multi-cloud architecture is technically complex, creates increased latency, and results in lower actual availability and resiliency than architecting for high-availability on AWS,” the spokesperson said.&nbsp;



Microsoft declined to comment.



Companies are typically reluctant to talk publicly about their cloud strategies and how much they spend, especially if it relates to a single vendor.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;asked 45 companies affected by the AWS outages – including McDonald’s, Toyota and Coinbase – whether they use multiple cloud vendors or were considering doing so, and whether the recent AWS outages had prompted them to change their cloud strategy.



Ride-sharing service Lyft previously made perhaps the boldest statement against Amazon after the most recent AWS outage turned off the Citi Bike stations it operates in New York and New Jersey,&nbsp;<a href="https://gothamist.com/news/amazon-outage-took-citi-bike-offline-height-rush-hour" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">saying</a>&nbsp;“we&#8217;re as frustrated as our riders.” Lyft, which had said it planned to “build redundancy” into its system, declined to comment further, or say whether it was considering moving to another cloud vendor. When asked about whether the AWS outages had prompted a rethink of its reliance on AWS, a spokesperson for Toyota underscored the need for companies to review their strategies when the system fails, and that for larger companies, it “may mean a more complex build-out utilizing more than one cloud vendor.”



American Express, another AWS customer, echoed the need for access to multiple clouds. Evan Kotsovinos, American Express’ global head of infrastructure, wouldn’t say whether Amex was affected by the AWS outages, but says the company has resiliency built in across its network because it has agreements with multiple vendors, in multiple regions. Amex has been building out its relationship with Oracle, for instance. “Different clouds have different strengths,” says Kotsovinos. “And so if you really want to get the maximum value out of the clouds, you&#8217;ve got to put the right applications in the right cloud.”



Others, meanwhile,&nbsp;affirmed their loyalty to AWS, despite the outages. Atlassian, which runs all of its products on top of AWS, told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;that it is not considering other cloud vendors. Atlassian CTO Sri Viswanath added that the company is unconcerned by the AWS hiccups. “Our engineering teams regularly war-games downtime scenarios,” Viswanath said in a statement. “So when the AWS outage happened, we had mitigation plans in place and were able to limit the overall impact to our customers.”&nbsp;



1Password, a password management company valued at $6.8 billion after a funding round this month, confirmed it uses a single AWS region, but said it offsets the risks of outages by encrypting its clients’ data locally. “At the end of the day, our decisions are made based on best-in-class infrastructure providers, and our choices aren’t triggered by any single event,&#8221; 1Password’s CTO Pedro Canahuati said in a statement.



And a spokesperson for Slack said “our strategy for cloud platform partners has not changed and we look forward to continuing our work with AWS.”



To be clear, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud also encounter outages. In October, Azure customers were&nbsp;<a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/global-azure-outage-knocked-out-virtual-machines-other-vm-dependent-services/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">unable</a>&nbsp;to access a suite of services for eight hours. And in November, company websites of Snap, Home Depot and Spotify and others were down after&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-16/home-depot-amazon-web-services-websites-reportedly-see-outages" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google Cloud experienced an outage</a>&nbsp;caused by a network configuration glitch. Outages also occur as a result of issues with edge cloud services, which often provide “last-mile” connections from the vendors, such as Akamai and Fastly.



And a major migration to multi-cloud environments – where large companies use more than one vendor – has been underway since 2019, a movement accelerated by the pandemic, which forced companies to outsource their networks as their employees worked from home. A survey by cloud-research firm Futuriom published in October found that 55% of large companies were currently using two or more cloud vendors, while 83% were assessing multi-cloud networking.



Amazon’s efforts to keep cloud customers loyal has been increasingly suffering from the perception it may compete with them. Capital One, among AWS’ largest clients,&nbsp;<a href="https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/capital-one-all-in-on-aws/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;at the annual AWS re:Invent conference in November 2020 that it was “going all in on the cloud” by closing all of its data centers and had migrated its networks to AWS. But Capital One told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;it has signed agreements with other cloud vendors, which it says it leverages “for niche use cases.” Given Amazon’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/amazon-across-financial-services-fintech/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">lofty ambitions</a>&nbsp;in the financial services sector, Capital One’s niche agreements with other vendors are likely to grow, says Steve Mullaney, the CEO of Aviatrics, which helps companies including Capital One manage multiple cloud environments. “What&#8217;s in your wallet?” Mullaney says, echoing the bank’s tagline. “Well, guess what: Maybe an Amazon card.”



For now, the outages are the most recent reminder for large corporations of the risk of relying on one cloud, Mullaney says. The AWS outages were “gasoline on the fire,” Mullaney says. “The last remnants – the laggards – it probably accelerated those people” to go multi-cloud.



 By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/"></a>David Jeans, Forbes Staff

In this photo illustration, the Amazon Books logo is seen

Amazon’s Devoted Cloud Customers Face A Decision After Outages: Leave, Stay Or Diversify?

Earlier this week, while Bezos was in Glasgow at the COP26 climate summit, he sold more than $2 billion worth of Amazon shares. The sale came as Bezos, the world’s second richest person, promised in a speech at the summit that he will spend&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sofialottopersio/2021/11/02/billionaire-jeff-bezos-takes-stage-at-cop26-to-pledge-2-billion-towards-nature-conservation/?sh=41e3a18c782c">$2 billion from his Earth Fund</a>&nbsp;on restoring nature and transforming food systems.&nbsp;



“We must conserve what we still have, we must restore what we’ve lost, and we must grow what we need to live without degrading the planet for future generations to come,” Bezos said during his talk in Glasgow.



The sale, after accounting for capital gains taxes Bezos likely owes, barely changes his net worth. As of midday Thursday, Bezos is worth $199.4 billion,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates. He trails the number one richest, Elon Musk (worth an estimated $317 billion), by about $118 billion.&nbsp;



Bezos has sold more than $8.8 billion worth of Amazon stock this year. Since taking Amazon public in 1998, the founder of the e-commerce giant has sold some $29 billion worth of Amazon shares,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;calculates; his stake in the company has gone from 42% in 1997 to just under 10% currently. Last year&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/06/24/heres-how-much-money-jeff-bezos-has-reaped-from-selling-amazon-stock/?sh=62bf2e63389a">he unloaded $10 billion worth</a>&nbsp;of his Amazon stake.



In July, Bezos gave up the role of Amazon CEO but has stayed on as the company’s chairman. Since then he’s shifted his focus to his rocket company, Blue Origin, and has made several announcements about philanthropic gifts. In September he announced a $1 billion pledge toward conservation efforts.&nbsp;MORE FOR YOU<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2021/09/23/evergrande-chairman-hui-ka-yan-has-been-paid-8-billion-in-cash-while-property-developer-piled-on-debt/">Evergrande Chairman Hui Ka Yan Has Been Paid $8 Billion In Cash While Property Developer Piled On Debt</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2021/09/26/walter-scott-jr-warren-buffetts-longtime-friend-and-business-partner-dead-at-90/">Walter Scott Jr., Warren Buffett’s Longtime Friend And Business Partner, Dead At 90</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2021/09/25/democrat-on-powerful-house-ways-and-means-committee-apparently-violated-stock-trade-rules/">Democrat On Powerful House Ways And Means Committee Apparently Violated Stock-Trade Rules</a>



Amazon stock has more than doubled in value since the beginning of 2019; it’s risen about 6% since early January 2021.



A spokesperson for Jeff Bezos at Amazon declined to comment regarding the share sales.



By Kerry A. Dolan, Forbes Staf

Amazon Unveils Its First Smartphone

Jeff Bezos Just Sold $2 Billion Worth Of Amazon Stock

TOPLINE Tech giants Apple and Amazon both came up short of expectations in quarterly earnings reports released after market close Thursday and warned of supply chain issues cutting into their bottom lines, causing Apple to fall 3.4% and Amazon to dip 3.6% in after-hours trading.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Apple&nbsp;<a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/10/apple-reports-fourth-quarter-results/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;revenue of $83.4 billion for the quarter ending September 25, a 29%year-over-year jump, though it was slightly below analyst&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/28/apple-aapl-q4-2021-earnings.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">expectations</a>, while its earnings per share of $1.24 per share matched forecasts.



Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an interview with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/28/apple-aapl-q4-2021-earnings.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CNBC</a>&nbsp;that “supply constraints,” including chip shortages, cost the company $6 billion in revenue.



Amazon&nbsp;<a href="https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2021/q3/Q3-2021-Earnings-Release.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;$110.81 billion in revenue for the quarter, also below&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/28/amazon-amzn-earnings-q3-2021.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">forecasts</a>, while its $6.12 earnings per share were well short of the $8.92 expected by analysts.



Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also&nbsp;<a href="https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-release/news-release-details/2021/Amazon.com-Announces-Third-Quarter-Results/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;that supply chain issues will cost the company “several billion dollars” in the current quarter, coinciding with the critical shopping season.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



Jassy detailed problems Amazon expects to face in the fourth quarter in the earnings&nbsp;<a href="https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2021/q3/Q3-2021-Earnings-Release.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">release</a>: “We expect to incur several billion dollars of additional costs in our Consumer business as we manage through labor supply shortages, increased wage costs, global supply chain issues, and increased freight and shipping costs.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$38.87 billion. That’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY21_Q4_Consolidated_Financial_Statements.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">how much</a>&nbsp;in iPhone sales Apple brought in last quarter.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Amazon and Apple were not the only members of the FAANG stock group (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) making headlines Thursday—Facebook changed its name to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisakim/2021/10/28/facebook-announces-new-name-meta/?sh=1224f8677f83">Meta</a>&nbsp;Thursday to reflect its foray into augmented reality and virtual reality.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/28/apple-aapl-q4-2021-earnings.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Apple sales miss expectations, Tim Cook says supply issues cost company $6 billion (CNBC)</a>



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/28/amazon-amzn-earnings-q3-2021.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Amazon badly misses on earnings and revenue, gives disappointing fourth-quarter guidance (CNBC)</a>Follow me on <a href="https://www.twitter.com/derek_saul" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Twitter</a>. Send me a secure <a href="https://www.forbes.com/tips/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">tip</a>. 



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/"></a>By Derek Saul, FORBES STAFF

In this photo illustration, a silhouette hand is seen

Amazon And Apple Both Fall Short Of Earnings Expectations, Citing Supply Chain Snags

TOPLINE: Shares of Amazon fell as much as 8% Friday after the e-commerce juggernaut disclosed a massive fine from European regulators for allegedly breaking regional privacy laws and posted second-quarter earnings results that failed to meet Wall Street expectations, putting the longtime market leader on track for its worst day in more than a year. 



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h3>



As of 11:15 a.m. EDT, Amazon stock has plunged 7% Friday to about $3,349.50, pushing the firm&#8217;s market capitalization down below $1.7 trillion and wiping out nearly $130 billion from a closing level above $1.8 trillion Thursday.



Ushering in the massive losses, Amazon posted second-quarter revenue after Thursday&#8217;s market close of $113.1 billion—up 27% year over year, but falling short of average analyst expectations totaling $115 billion.



Despite soaring more than 48%, net income of more than $7.7 billion also fell slightly short of estimates, which called for about $7.8 billion.



The stark decline also comes after Amazon&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001018724/000101872421000020/amzn-20210630.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">disclosed</a>&nbsp;a $885 million (746 million euros) fine, levied on July 16, by the Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection, which claims Amazon&#8217;s processing of personal data did not comply with European regulations.&nbsp;



In the filing, Amazon, which in a statement asserts no data breach has occurred, said it believes the watchdog&#8217;s decision is &#8220;without merit&#8221; and that it intends to appeal the ruling and defend itself &#8220;vigorously&#8221; in the matter.



Amazon&#8217;s Friday plunge puts it on track for its worst one-day decline since the height of pandemic uncertainty tanked the broader market in March 2020.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE&nbsp;</h3>



&#8220;Consumers&#8217; online shopping levels are returning to more normal levels as they shift some spending to other entertainment sources and offline shopping,&#8221; Morningstar analyst Dan Romanoff said in a Friday note. &#8220;Meanwhile, the company continues to add capacity [and costs] at a breakneck pace in order to meet customer demand and one day delivery,&#8221; Romanoff added, pointing out Amazon has already nearly doubled its footprint during the last 18 months.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h3>



Shares of Amazon are now down more than 10% from a record closing high of $3,719 earlier this month.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h3>



Amazon far underperformed the broader market Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which doesn&#8217;t include Amazon, ticked down just 0.2%, while the S&amp;P 500, which counts the retail giant as its third-largest component, fell 0.4%.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-chief-critic">CHIEF CRITIC</h3>



“Maintaining the security of our customers’ information and their trust are top priorities. There has been no data breach, and no customer data has been exposed to any third party. These facts are undisputed,” Amazon said in a statement Friday. “The decision relating to how we show customers relevant advertising relies on subjective and untested interpretations of European privacy law, and the proposed fine is entirely out of proportion with even that interpretation.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58024116" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Amazon hit with $886m fine for alleged data breach</a> (BBC)



By Jonathan Ponciano, Forbes Staff

Amazon Stock Loses $130 Billion In Market Value After $885 Million Fine And Disappointing Earnings Report

TOPLINE Amazon and Google are facing a formal investigation in the U.K. over concerns they are not doing enough to protect users from fake reviews, the competition watchdog announced Friday, adding to increasing regulatory efforts around the world to compel tech companies to take more responsibility for problematic content on their platforms.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h4>



The Competition and Markets Authority said it had opened an investigation to determine whether Google and Amazon had broken consumer law by failing to take sufficient steps to “protect shoppers from fake reviews.”&nbsp;



The probe follows a broader investigation into fake reviews last year that “raised specific concerns” the two companies were not doing enough to detect and remove fake or misleading reviews or to identify “suspicious patterns of behavior” among reviewers.



The CMA said it was also concerned that neither platform had done enough to discourage businesses or reviewers from posting bogus reviews and Amazon in particular had failed to prevent sellers from manipulating its product listings.&nbsp;



“Fake and misleading reviews have the potential to impact on businesses’ star ratings and how prominently companies and products are displayed to consumers, changing their whole shopping experience,” the watchdog said.&nbsp;



The companies face enforcement action should the investigation find they have broken the law, the CMA said, which could include formal commitments to deal with the issue or, should they fail to do so, court action.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Amazon and Google did not respond immediately to&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;request for comment.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h4>



Andrea Coscelli, the CMA’s chief executive, said the watchdog’s worry is “that millions of online shoppers could be misled by reading fake reviews and then spending their money based on those recommendations.” In addition, “it’s simply not fair if some businesses can fake 5-star reviews to give their products or services the most prominence, while law-abiding businesses lose out,” Coscelli added.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h4>



Online reviews are a powerful driver of consumer decisions, whether that be for what to buy, where to go or what to eat. Many people rely on them as a metric to determine quality and authenticity and reviews will shape what is shown to consumers. A 2015 study by the CMA&nbsp;<a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/436238/Online_reviews_and_endorsements.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">estimated</a>&nbsp;them to drive around £23 billion (around $32 billion) in spending a year in the U.K. alone. To seize upon this, an entire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56069472" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">industry</a>&nbsp;has emerged trafficking in fake or misleading reviews. The CMA has previously&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/21/facebook-and-ebay-told-to-take-action-over-fake-reviews-cma" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ordered</a>&nbsp;Facebook and eBay to tackle the problem after it found “troubling evidence” of a thriving marketplace for fake reviews.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h4>



16,000. This is how many&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/09/facebook-removes-over-16000-groups-trading-fake-reviews" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">groups</a>&nbsp;Facebook took down earlier this year after the CMA intervened for a second time after the platform failed to honor its promise to deal with fake reviews.&nbsp;



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contra">CONTRA</h4>



Amazon recently&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/16/amazon-blames-social-media-for-struggle-with-fake-reviews" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">blamed</a>&nbsp;social media companies for a large chunk of its fake review problem, saying they are not doing enough to remove the “bad actors” coordinating or soliciting reviews from their platforms. “While we appreciate that some social media companies have become much faster at responding, to address this problem at scale it is imperative for social media companies to invest adequately in proactive controls to detect and enforce fake reviews ahead of our reporting the issue to them,” the company said.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h4>



<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/09/facebook-removes-over-16000-groups-trading-fake-reviews" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Facebook removes over 16,000 groups trading fake reviews</a>&nbsp;(Guardian)



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/06/amazon-reviews-thousands-are-fake-heres-how-to-spot-them.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Amazon is filled with fake reviews and it’s getting harder to spot them</a> (CNBC)



By Robert Hart, Forbes Staff

In this photo illustrative Google, Amazon and Apple logos

Amazon And Google Face U.K. Investigation Into Fake Reviews

<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?sh=28bb8a6a1b23">Jeff Bezos</a>&nbsp;didn’t have to wait long to reclaim his throne as the richest person in the world: A few hours after&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddawkins/2021/05/24/bernard-arnault-becomes-worlds-richest-person-as-lvmh-stock-rises/?sh=355a97ab2ad9">losing</a>&nbsp;the title to French luxury fashion magnate&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bernard-arnault/?sh=23d080666fa4">Bernard Arnault</a>, he’s now back at No. 1 after Amazon’s shares ticked up when markets opened in New York. As of 1:30 pm ET, Bezos leads with a fortune of $188.4 billion, ahead of Arnault’s $187.3 billion.



The two men entered the weekend on level terms, worth $186 billion each, after shares in Arnault’s&nbsp; luxury goods conglomerate LVMH rallied in the second half of last week. LVMH stock performed even better on Monday, closing nearly 1% higher and boosting Arnault’s fortune by $1.7 billion—enough for him to briefly eclipse Bezos and become the world’s richest person for a few hours. Then Amazon shares ticked up more than 1% as of 1:30 pm ET on Monday, making Bezos $2.4 billion richer today.



Arnault has briefly ranked as the world’s richest person several times already: Just before the markets closed on Friday in the U.S., Arnault was about $100 million&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2021/05/21/french-luxury-tycoon-bernard-arnault-is-now-tied-with-jeff-bezos-for-richest-person-in-the-world/?sh=364d38d42b91">richer</a>&nbsp;than Bezos, before ending the day with the same net worth. At around 10:30 am ET on December 16, 2019, Arnault&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinstoller/2019/12/16/french-billionaire-bernard-arnault-was-briefly-the-worlds-richest-person-today/?sh=43b1d3ad7ce1">pushed</a>&nbsp;past Bezos to claim No. 1 for the first time, until Amazon shares closed higher and Arnault fell back to number two.



While Bezos is now trading the top spot with Arnault, he was previously locked into a tight competition with Tesla CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?sh=5a9c30fe7999">Elon Musk</a>, currently the third richest person in the world with a net worth of $150.8 billion. In early January, Musk overtook Bezos to become the richest on three separate occasions—on January 8, 12 and 14—before the Amazon founder definitively clawed his way back on January 15.



All three men have seen spectacular growth in their net worths throughout the pandemic, collectively gaining more than $300 billion. Since Forbes calculated net worths for its 2020 World’s Billionaires list at the worst of the market crash in March 2020, Bezos has gotten more than $75 billion richer, compared to gains of nearly $127 billion for Musk and $111 billion for Arnault. Bezos’ net worth peaked at a staggering $200 billion on two occasions: <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/08/26/worlds-richest-billionaire-jeff-bezos-first-200-billion/?sh=495faf434db7">first</a> in August 2020 and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2021/04/28/jeff-bezos-is-once-again-worth-a-staggering-200-billion/?sh=287e3af24b4e">again</a> late last month in April 2021.



By Giacomo Tognini, Forbes Staff

Jeff Bezos’s India Visit Marked By Probe and Protests

After Briefly Dropping To No. 2, Jeff Bezos Is Again The Richest Person In The World

TOPLINE Amazon is preparing to make a $9 billion investment in the company’s film and television offerings by purchasing vaunted Hollywood studio&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/05/24/amazon-reportedly-close-to-buying-mgm-for-nearly-9-billion/?sh=74c23a063d4c">MGM</a>, the&nbsp;Wall Street Journal&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-nears-deal-to-buy-hollywood-studio-mgm-11621880759?mod=hp_lead_pos1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;Monday, the latest in a string of major acquisitions the company has made to boost its standing in even more areas of people’s lives—here are the most notable:



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h3>



Amazon’s largest acquisition to date was when it&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40306099" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">purchased</a>&nbsp;Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion.



The company has also spent more than a billion dollars on shoe ecommerce giant&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/02/amazon-closes-zappos-deal-ends-up-paying-1-2-billion/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Zappos</a>&nbsp;($1.2 billion in 2009) and autonomous vehicle company&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2020/06/27/amazon-buys-zoox-why-self-driving-technology-is-existential/?sh=7714dde17c0f">Zoox</a>, which is&nbsp;<a href="https://zoox.com/about/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">developing</a>&nbsp;a self-driving rideshare service ($1.2 billion in 2020).



Other pricey acquisitions include smart doorbell maker&nbsp;<a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2019/new-filing-amazon-spent-1-65b-acquisitions-2018-headlined-ring-pillpack-deals/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ring</a>&nbsp;($839 million in 2018), online pharmacist PillPack ($753 million in 2018), video game streaming platform&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-buys-twitch-2014-8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitch</a>&nbsp;($970 million in 2014), robotics company&nbsp;<a href="https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/amazon-com-buys-kiva-systems-for-775-million/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kiva Systems</a>&nbsp;($775 million in 2012) and&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2010/11/08/confirmed-amazon-spends-545-million-on-diapers-com-parent-quidsi/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Quidsi</a>, the parent company of Diapers.com and other ecommerce sites ($545 million in 2010).



Amazon has invested in its cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services—which now makes up the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2021/amazon-apple-facebook-google-acquisitions/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">majority</a>&nbsp;of the company’s operating income—by purchasing more than a dozen companies in that sector, including $500 million for mobile video service&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/03/amazon-acquires-elemental-technologies-for-a-reported-500-million-in-cash/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Elemental Technologies</a>&nbsp;in 2018 and $20 million for cyber security startup&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/09/amazon-aws-harvest-ai/?ncid=rss&amp;utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&amp;sr_share=twitter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">harvest.ai</a>&nbsp;in 2017.



In addition to its expected MGM purchase, Amazon has also invested in the film industry by acquiring&nbsp;<a href="https://venturebeat.com/2015/10/30/25-years-of-imdb-the-worlds-biggest-online-movie-database/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">IMDB</a>&nbsp;(purchased in 1998 as part of a $55 million acquisition with two other companies), DVD rental service&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9aa7315e-2482-11e0-8c0e-00144feab49a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lovefilm</a>&nbsp;(for £200 million or approximately $317 million in 2011) and film grosses website&nbsp;<a href="https://variety.com/2008/digital/news/imdb-links-up-with-box-office-mojo-1117997423/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Box Office Mojo</a>&nbsp;(in 2008 for an undisclosed amount).



Amazon has strengthened its foothold in the book industry where it got its start by acquiring companies like audiobook seller&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-acquires-audible-for-300-million/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Audible</a>&nbsp;($300 million in 2008), social network&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/28/amazon-acquires-social-reading-site-goodreads/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Goodreads</a>&nbsp;(in 2013 for an undisclosed amount), book publisher&nbsp;<a href="https://money.cnn.com/2012/06/04/technology/amazon-avalon-books/index.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Avalon Books</a>&nbsp;(in 2012 for an undisclosed amount) and used bookseller&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2008/08/01/amazon-to-acquire-abebooks/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AbeBooks</a>&nbsp;(in 2008 for an undisclosed amount).



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h3>



“Amazon has an inventive, customer-obsessed, long-term oriented culture where entrepreneurs thrive,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement to&nbsp;Forbes, adding the company helps those it acquires “to accelerate their businesses and delight customers with the help of Amazon’s resources and technology.” “We operate in a diverse range of businesses, from retail and entertainment to consumer electronics and technology services, and have thriving, well-established competition in each of these areas,” the spokesperson noted.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-chief-critic">CHIEF CRITIC</h3>



Amazon and other tech giants’ acquisition practices have been criticized by lawmakers, who have accused the companies of practicing anti-competitive behavior by buying up smaller rivals. “As gatekeepers to the digital economy, these platforms enjoy the power to pick winners and losers, shake down small businesses, and enrich themselves while choking off competitors,” Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who chairs the House Antitrust Subcommittee,&nbsp;<a href="https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-opening-statement-big-tech-antitrust-hearing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;in his opening statement for a hearing concerning Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. “Their ability to dictate terms, call the shots, upend entire sectors, and inspire fear represent the powers of a private government.” Amazon has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/statement-by-jeff-bezos-to-the-u-s-house-committee-on-the-judiciary" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">denied</a>&nbsp;the antitrust allegations against it and maintains that it competes with other platforms like eBay, Etsy, Walmart and Target and brick and mortar stores worldwide, noting the platform’s sales make up less than 4% of U.S. retail.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h3>



Sources cited by the&nbsp;Journal&nbsp;say a deal between Amazon and MGM could be finalized as early as this week, though nothing has yet been finalized and “there are no guarantees they will ultimately reach an agreement.” Should the deal go through, MGM’s library would substantially bolster Amazon’s streaming platform by giving it access to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/amazon-acquire-mgm-1234954655/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">thousands</a>&nbsp;of additional film and television titles, helping Amazon Prime better compete with other streaming powerhouses like Netflix. MGM’s century-long history dates back to the silent era, giving Amazon access to films like the&nbsp;James Bond&nbsp;franchise and&nbsp;Rocky&nbsp;films and newer properties like&nbsp;The Handmaid’s Tale&nbsp;television series. (Golden Age classics made at the studio before 1948 like&nbsp;The Wizard of Oz&nbsp;and&nbsp;Gone with the Wind&nbsp;have already been sold to Warner Bros, however, the&nbsp;Journal&nbsp;notes.) The reported $9 billion deal comes after MGM was most recently valued at $5.5 billion in December, the&nbsp;Journal&nbsp;reports, though its stock price has soared in response to news of the expected deal.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h3>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/05/24/amazon-reportedly-close-to-buying-mgm-for-nearly-9-billion/?sh=74c23a063d4c">Amazon Reportedly Close To Buying MGM For Nearly $9 Billion</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-nears-deal-to-buy-hollywood-studio-mgm-11621880759" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Amazon Nears Deal to Buy Hollywood Studio MGM</a>&nbsp;(Wall Street Journal)



<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2021/amazon-apple-facebook-google-acquisitions/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">How Big Tech got so big: Hundreds of acquisitions</a>&nbsp;(Washington Post)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnchmielewski/2021/01/30/mgms-back-on-the-block-and-floating-a-10-billion-price-tag-dont-count-on-it/?sh=7f1cb80eb740">MGM’s Back On The Block And Floating A $10 Billion Price Tag. Don’t Count On It.</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



By Alison Durkee, Forbes Staff

Amazon Package Deliveries On Prime Day

Amazon’s Biggest Acquisitions Have Allowed It To Become A Marketplace For Nearly Everything

Amazon, Facebook, TikTok and a growing number of venture-backed startups are all seeking to replicate QVC&#8217;s success selling stuff via live demos and time-pressured promotions. But the original home shopping is still way ahead &#8211; for now.



In March, a year into the pandemic, QVC is pitching a predictably eclectic assortment of items. A set of three collapsible storage boxes for $33, perfect for the springtime ritual of clearing away clutter — 28,000 sold! A pink amaryllis bulb for Easter – yours for three payments of $10.89! An “ingenious” planter in the shape of a frog — only 500 left!



Hardly the essentials needed to endure a lockdown, but it’s made for brisk business for QVC and its sister channel HSN, which now reach into 380 million homes worldwide and continue to find a massive audience for its hokey sales pitches that push everything from mattresses and mops to cooking supplies and jewelry.



Last year, the two channels — plus a handful of smaller clothing and home décor brands — delivered revenue of $11.4 billion for publicly-traded Qurate Retail. QVC has been around for 35 years but has suddenly become the company to beat in the industry’s new fervor for live shopping. Amazon, Facebook and TikTok are in hot pursuit, along with a number of venture-backed startups. Walmart wants in too, as do Macy’s, Nordstrom, Urban Outfitters, Wayfair, Estee Lauder, Tommy Hilfiger and Levi Strauss, all of whom have begun to experiment with the approach as a way of reaching shoppers who are staying at home — and may never come back.



“They are more relevant now than ever,” says Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, of the two channels born at the dawn of the cable TV era.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/GettyImages-1180313883-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-50467" width="175" height="262" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/GettyImages-1180313883-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/GettyImages-1180313883-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/GettyImages-1180313883-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/GettyImages-1180313883-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/GettyImages-1180313883-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/GettyImages-1180313883-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 175px) 100vw, 175px" /><figcaption>Qurate Retail Group CEO Mike George . (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Fashion Footwear Charitable Foundation )</figcaption></figure></div>



Livestream shopping, the internet-era name given to programming that leans heavily on lively demos, time-pressured promotions and real-time interactions with shoppers, is set to grow four-fold to $25 billion in the U.S. in the next two years, according to Coresight Research. And that’s nothing compared to what’s happening in China, where data firm iResearch expects consumers to spend $300 billion on livestream purchases this year, about 15% of the country’s total online sales. Qurate, with 22 million active customers, is the largest in the U.S. by far and still growing, adding 7.6 million new shoppers during 2020. Shares of Qurate, which is controlled by cable billionaire John Malone, have delivered total returns of 300% in the past 12 months.



“The world is shifting to what we do,” says Qurate CEO Mike George, who is set to retire at the end of the year. “As we see others copy what we do, it motivates us to move that much faster to expand our leadership.”



While most livestreamers are still fumbling for footing, QVC is a well-oiled machine that has already won over millions of bargain-hunting, middle-aged women, who buy an average of 26 items every year at a cost of $1,335, an enviable advantage. Big tech is still in the trial and error phase. Amazon’s first effort, “Style Code Live,&#8221; was cancelled in 2017 after a year. The online behemoth has since revamped the strategy to allow brands and influencers to host their own livestreams, which run throughout the day on the Amazon Live page. Last year, Facebook&nbsp;<a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2020/05/introducing-facebook-shops/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">began making it easier</a>&nbsp;for small businesses to sell products during livestream sessions, while TikTok is running tests with Walmart. A pilot event in December attracted seven times more viewers than it anticipated, prompting&nbsp;<a href="https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2021/03/09/walmart-doubles-down-on-tiktok-shopping-hosts-all-new-live-stream-shopping-event" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a second livestream earlier this month</a>.



A rash of copycats has also emerged, with ambitions of overtaking the incumbent with a slicker, more digitally savvy version geared toward young shoppers. “I love it,” says George, who keeps a thick file of stories about companies purporting to be the ‘new QVC,’ most of them failed. “It’s good to be talked about.”



If any of them do gain traction, they could threaten the value of that 380-million home reach. That’s why George has embraced streaming services like YouTube TV, the company&#8217;s own branded websites and mobile apps, as well as social media. He’s now testing 15-second spots on TikTok and on-demand content like a 30-minute show where celebrity chef Curtis Stone travels to far-flung destinations to sample local cuisine. A new app, currently in beta in the U.K., will let users themselves livestream content, the same kind of user-generated content approach that has boomed in China.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">The world is shifting to what we do. As we see others copy what we do, it motivates us to move that much faster to expand our leadership.<cite>-Mike George, CEO of Qurate Retail</cite></blockquote>



George won’t disclose how many orders still start with a customer tuning in through their television, and instead points out that QVC and HSN are now mostly digital businesses, with about 60% of their revenue coming from online sales and two-thirds of those purchases made from mobile devices. Still, sales rose just 5% in 2020, hardly the numbers posted by a game-changing growth business.



The 59-year-old retail veteran began running QVC in 2005, shortly after cable giant Comcast sold its stake in the business to Malone’s Liberty Media Corp. in 2003, and oversaw the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/business/dealbook/qvc-home-shopping-network-merger.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2017 acquisition</a>&nbsp;of its main rival, HSN. Before he took the job, he was put off by what felt like a dated concept even then, but was won over by its connection with customers and the way it sent units flying out the door. The son of a carpenter who learned as a kid he was no good with his hands, George&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/jobs/21boss.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">became convinced that QVC’s “best days were yet to come.”</a>



“The people that watch QVC and HSN and buy stuff on there woke up that morning and didn’t know they needed a pan or makeup or whatever it is,” says Evercore ISI retail analyst Oliver Wintermantel. Its biggest problem? An aging audience.



That’s what led him&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/qvc-to-acquire-online-shopping-site-zulily-for-2-4-billion-1439813202" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">to pay $2.4 billion for flash sales site Zulily</a>&nbsp;in 2015, giving him a brand that also relies on time-pressured promotions but is popular among moms with young children. He also ramped up the marketing budget for QVC and HSN to $170 million last year, with a focus on social media ads and partnerships with influencers.



George says he’s got the problem in hand, but not because he believes that youth is the future. Gen Z shoppers lack the disposable income, hobbies and life experience to be interested in what he’s selling. “We’ve never worried a whole lot about being cool,” he says. Instead, he sees plenty of runway left for his core audience of women 35 and older.



His bigger worry is becoming a showroom for Amazon. That’s led to exclusive merchandise deals, both with emerging entrepreneurs like IT Cosmetics founder Jamie Kern Lima and celebrities like Katy Perry, Martha Stewart, Jaime Foxx and HGTV’s Property Brothers, who are drawn to the company’s massive reach.&nbsp;



One of those lines was with plus-sized model Hunter McGrady, the curviest woman ever featured on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, who watched QVC with her mom growing up and debuted a clothing line with the channel last year. She worked with the in-house design team to create a line of hoodies, joggers and cardigans in sizes XXS to 5x, then began going on-air to walk customers through the story behind each piece. Doing it live she can demonstrate how the clothing moves on her body. On one segment, the 27-year-old explained how she created a ruched tank top because she could never find one that sufficiently covered her backside. She has sold 155,000 units since launching last April, most to customers she never would have reached on her Instagram page.&nbsp;



“I think what a lot of livestream shopping folks miss is they’re trying to sell you something in the moment with technology, a flashy influencer and slick production values,” says George, who says his viewers often watch hours and hours of programming before springing for a purchase. “They’re not establishing any connection, relationship or intimacy with you. They’re not enticing you to come back tomorrow to discover something new. That is the magic of what we try and do.” 



-by Lauren Debter,Forbes Staff

Teleshopping

Where QVC Is Still Way Ahead Of Amazon

When Chinese e-commerce company Pinduoduo announced on Wednesday that it had reached 788.4 million active users, surpassing Alibaba’s 779 million and Amazon’s 300 million, its founder and chairman, Colin Huang, revealed he’d be&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/palashghosh/2021/03/17/pinduoduo-is-now-chinas-biggest-e-commerce-platform-as-billionaire-chairman-colin-huang-steps-down/">stepping down</a>. But why would Huang, who resigned as CEO in July and has a net worth of $50 billion according to&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;estimate, exit upon reaching such a milestone?&nbsp;



Rarely is stepping down easy for a chief executive, but it can be especially challenging for those who are employee No. 1. For Huang, the increased scrutiny his company, as well as the rest of the Chinese tech sector, has come under in recent months may have contributed to his decision to walk away. He’s not the only founder to have done so in recent months.&nbsp;



After CEO churn dropped 20% year-over-year with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.challengergray.com/blog/companies-ramp-up-ceo-changes-in-february-turnover-spikes-to-106/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1,314 exiting</a>&nbsp;in 2020—due, in part, to companies’ reluctance to make major leadership changes amid the coronavirus crisis—195 departed in the first two months of 2021, according to recruiting firm Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas. Several have been founders. And while some did not resign voluntarily—including John Matze, who was ousted as the CEO of Parler after Amazon Web Services took the social app offline in response to its ties to the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and Leon Black, who stepped down as CEO of Apollo Global Management following an independent review of his relationship with late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—most stepped down on their own accord, a result, says Jane Stevenson, vice chair of organizational consultancy Korn Ferry, of the pandemic.&nbsp;



“People are more mindful of the things they want to do, and if it’s a successful founder, there may be other priorities that they want to address sooner than later,” she says. “I’ve seen CEOs and board members who have said, ‘You know what, life is really short, and this is too much. I’m out.’”



For evidence of this trend, look no further than one of the most notable founder-CEO resignations of the year so far: Amazon’s billionaire Jeff Bezos. In February, he announced plans to step down as chief executive of the e-commerce giant he launched from his Seattle garage in 1994. Bezos, who&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates is worth $178.1 billion, will be taking on the role of executive chair, while Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy succeeds him. In a memo to staff about the news, he&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/email-from-jeff-bezos-to-employees" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote</a>, “When you have a responsibility like that, it’s hard to put attention on anything else,” nodding to the time he now hopes to spend on his philanthropic Day 1 Fund and Bezos Earth Fund, aerospace company Blue Origin and&nbsp;The Washington Post.&nbsp;



At the time his announcement took the world by surprise, but perhaps it shouldn’t have. Amazon had just reported a record-breaking $125.6 billion in sales during the fourth quarter, and after 27 years at the helm, he’s going out on top, having spent more time in the chief executive role than most of his counterparts: While the average CEO tenure is longer than that of any other C-suite executive, it’s just 6.9 years, down from 8 years in 2016, according to <a href="https://www.kornferry.com/about-us/press/age-and-tenure-in-the-c-suite" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data</a> from Korn Ferry. “There are a lot less CEOs that have been over a decade in the job than there used to be,” Stevenson says. Many of the founder-CEOs who’ve stepped down this year have, like Bezos, been exceptions to this rule. “Founders are very tightly tied to the organizations [they start], from an identity standpoint,” she adds.



Kendra Scott, for example, stepped down as CEO of her namesake jewelry business in February, nearly 20 years after founding the company. With a majority stake in the brand, the Texas jewelry tycoon is worth $510 million by&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;estimate, and like Bezos, will remain involved with her brand, focusing on design, customer experience and philanthropy as executive chairwoman when Tom Nolan, currently president, takes over. After guiding her business through a period of rapid retail transformation in response to Covid-19, it’s likely Scott sees the impending return to normalcy as an opportunity for a leadership transition.&nbsp;



“It might be a time for a change. It might be that the CEO says, ‘You know what, I&#8217;m going to see it through to stability but then I&#8217;m done,’” Stevenson says. “I think everybody’s been holding on in a lot of ways for a year.”



That’s certainly the case for Girls Who Code CEO Reshma Saujani. A decade after founding the nonprofit, she decided it’s due for a leadership change, and when she steps down in April to become board chair, her COO, Dr. Tarika Barrett, will step up. “I&#8217;m a big believer that leaders cannot or should not stay in organizations forever, and that you can’t stay innovative if you have the same person leading the movement forever,” Saujani told<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2021/02/10/exclusive-dr-tarika-barrett-to-succeed-reshma-saujani-as-girls-who-code-ceo/"> Forbes</a> in an exclusive interview last month. “I think that especially with Covid-19 happening, we were at a juncture as an organization. And in many ways, that is the right time for leadership change.” 



A time of crisis can shine a light on the importance of succession planning, especially for founder-CEOs, who have both a professional and personal stake in their companies. For this reason, Stevenson says they tend to tap successors from within.



“When you think about where a company is heading, having the right leader to take it there is really critical,” Stevenson says. “It’s pretty clear from the data that it’s advantageous when possible to promote internally versus going externally for succession process, because you’ve got the cultural credibility, you&#8217;ve got an understanding, you’re already engaged in the market.”&nbsp;



It’s for this reason that just last week, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-salesforce-com-ceo/exclusive-salesforces-taylor-emerges-as-ceo-candidate-sources-idUSKBN2B12C0?il=0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reuters report</a>&nbsp;that said Salesforce COO Bret Taylor is being groomed to take over as chief executive led to speculation that billionaire founder Marc Benioff might be the next founder-CEO to make a move. If these recent founder exits are any indication, though, if he does depart, he’ll likely not be going very far.&nbsp;



“Very often, the founder moves to a chair role, whether it&#8217;s executive chair or non-executive chair,” Stevenson says. “It’s hard for a founder to step away entirely.”



-by Samantha Todd, Forbes Staff

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Attends Amazon’s Annual Smbhav Event In Delhi

From Jeff Bezos To Kendra Scott: These Leaders All Recently Stepped Down From The Companies They Founded

South African- born, billionaire technology and space entrepreneur, Elon Musk, made history at the start of 2021, overtaking Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to become the richest man on Earth. While his fortune was made on this planet, his dreams to venture to the final frontier remain. FORBES AFRICA takes a look at his journey to becoming one of the world’s most celebrated innovators and one of the wealthiest men alive.



THE MAN WHO FAMOUSLY SAID THAT HE WOULDN’T BE HAPPY UNTIL WE WERE ALL LIVING ON MARS, IS NOW ONE OF THE RICHEST MEN ON EARTH. WHILE ELON MUSK’S PLANS TO BE BURIED IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY REMAIN UNCHANGED, HE’S STILL GOT MUCH TO CELEBRATE IN THE HERE AND NOW.



On January 8 this year, at approximately 11.30AM on the American East Coast, Musk, known for founding some of the world’s most progressive tech companies, along with his unrelenting space-age ambitions, made yet another historical leap.



His net worth soared by $12.5 billion, to $189.7 billion, making him, for a time, the wealthiest person on the planet, according to Forbes, who broke the news. For the first time, Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, who had held the top spot for a record four years, came second with a cumulative net worth of $185 billion.



However, in a twist of fate, stock in his electric car company, Tesla, fell by 8%, denting his personal wealth by a hefty $14 billion, overnight. But like the man himself, Musk’s wealth wouldn’t be down for long.



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-819x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49882" width="376" height="470" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-819x1024.jpg 819w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-240x300.jpg 240w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-1638x2048.jpg 1638w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-300x375.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-600x750.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1208933748-scaled.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 376px) 100vw, 376px" /><figcaption>UNIVERSAL CITY, CALIFORNIA &#8211; FEBRUARY 26: Model Maye Musk (Photo by Paul Archuleta/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">Elon’s aim is to save the planet and he also loves the thought of going to Mars&#8230;. I get very excited every step of the way. We all do. Kimbal and Tosca [Elon’s siblings] and I go to the main [SpaceX] launches, we can’t go to all the launches, as he has launched, how many now&#8230; 50 rockets? I’m not sure. I lose track. But we go to the main ones, and we are anxious beforehand and excited afterward and we are very proud of him and support him with all this. He just feels that we should be inter-planetary, starting with Mars. Mars seems to be the most friendly [planet], and that is what he would like to explore. <cite>-Elon Musk’s mother Maye Musk, in an interview from Los Angeles with FORBES AFRICA last year about her memoir, A Woman Makes A Plan, released by Jonathan Ball Publishers</cite></blockquote>



Days later, with the swift rebound of Tesla shares by 4.7%, he wrestled the top spot from Bezos with an impressive recovery of $7.8 billion bringing his total net worth to $183.8 billion against the Amazon founder’s, marginal, but impressive, $182.4 billion.



At the time of going to press, the yo-yo action continued. Tesla’s stock volatility returned Bezos to the top spot, making him the world’s richest by just $200 million, with Musk making a close second. The game is set to continue for much of the year, but it won’t do much to change the fact that both billionaires are still over $30 billion richer than their nearest competitor; the third person on the list, French luxury tycoon, Bernard Arnault, according to Forbes estimates.



Musk’s dizzying ascent is quite an achievement given that, in 2014, he ranked 47th on the U.S. Rich List, compiled by Forbes, with his personal net worth hovering at the $9.4 billion mark, at contemporary rates.



Notwithstanding his meteoric rise, most studies of Musk begin at SpaceX, his landmark aerospace manufacturing outfit, launched in 2002 with plans to make space travel more affordable and meet its founder’s often parodied mandate to catalyze humanity’s colonization of Mars.



“I’d like to go to Mars. I suppose it depends on how old I am when I get there&#8230; But it’s not about me going to Mars. We’re developing new technologies to enable a large number of people to go to Mars and be able to develop a self-sustaining city on Mars,” he told Forbes in 2014.



Inter-planetary ambitions aside, Musk’s ideas often overshadow the story of his origins which are rooted in a very down-to-earth Pretoria suburb, a few miles north of Johannesburg, in South Africa. Born in 1971 to a Canadian mother and a South African father, it was clear that Musk was unique from the start.



“The kind of things he would come up with as a youngster was always surprising. When he was very small, he would ask me, ‘where is the whole world?’, when he was three or four. It was these sorts of questions that made me realize that he was a little different,” his father, Errol Musk, noted in a 2012 interview with FORBES AFRICA.



Eccentricities aside, the young Musk was equally academically gifted.



“We called Elon ‘The Encyclopedia’ because he had read the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Collier’s Encyclopedia, and remembered everything. That’s also why we called him ‘Genius Boy’. We could ask him anything. Remember, this was before the internet. I guess now we would call him ‘The Internet’,” his mother, Maye Musk, recalls in her 2019 autobiography, A Woman Makes a Plan.



Attending Pretoria Boys High School (PBHS), often considered one of the most prestigious schools in South Africa, a teenage Musk kept to himself but found plenty of company in computers. He taught himself how to program using an old manual and eventually sold a space-themed video game that he wrote called Blastar, to a computing magazine in 1984, reportedly for $500, arguably the earliest of his tech ventures.



“My impression is that Elon kept to himself and was relatively quiet and reserved. I believe he was involved with the computer club at school, but otherwise was not really visible in mainstream activities,” Gavin Ehlers, head-boy at PBHS in 1988, the same year Musk graduated, told FORBES AFRICA in 2012.



Yet, despite his remarkable talent and comfortable upbringing, Musk’s childhood was blighted with peculiar challenges. As the shortest, smallest, and smartest kid in the class, he was an easy target for bullies, who tormented him until he was 15 years old.



“I was a late bloomer. So I was the youngest and the smallest kid in class for years and years&#8230; The gangs at school would hunt me down – literally hunt me down,” Musk told Rolling Stone magazine in 2017.



At home, things weren’t easier. His parents divorced in 1980.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">If somebody else is working 50 hours and you’re working a 100, you’ll get twice as much done in the course of the year as the other company.</blockquote>



The tumult of his early life did much to shape the man that Musk would later become. Even as a youngster, he held strong to his principles. At the time, in apartheid South Africa, mandatory two-year military service was in force for all white males who had completed their secondary school or tertiary- level education. In his objection, Musk said he didn’t prescribe to what the state was doing to its citizens.



“I don’t have an issue with serving in the military per se, but serving in the South African army suppressing black people just didn’t seem like a really good way to spend time,” he explained in the 2007 book, Rocketeers, by Michael Belfiore.



At 17, Musk relocated to Canada to attend university in 1989. After a number of transfers, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, part of the prominent Ivy League in the United States, with a dual degree in Economics and Physics, setting him firmly on the path of a tech entrepreneur. Like all the greats, he dropped out of his Ph.D. program at Stanford, instead of establishing his first startup, against the euphoria of the dot-com boom of the nineties. He founded the company, Zip2, with his younger brother, Kimbal – who has been a keen business partner to Musk throughout his entrepreneurial career – in 1995.



“When my brother and I were starting our first company, instead of getting an apartment we rented a small office and slept on the couch. We were so hard-up we had just one computer so the website was up during the day and I was coding at night. Seven days a week&#8230; all the time. I briefly had a girlfriend during that period and in order to be with me she had to sleep at the office,” he said with a smile, during a 2014 Commencement Speech at the University of Southern California (USC).



Hard work is a cornerstone of Musk’s entrepreneurial ethos. His constant refrain to anyone who inquires on his success is to outwork the competition, where possible, to get that all important edge.



“If somebody else is working 50 hours and you’re working a 100, you’ll get twice as much done in the course of the year as the other company,” he told the audience at USC.



Clearly, the hard work has paid off for Musk who joined the five-man centi-billionaires club; all with a net worth over $100 billion, in August 2020.



Members include Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and veteran tech titan, Bill Gates.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;Given that as a South African, he has managed to conquer the industry he’s in should be an inspiration to us and to Africa, in general. There are many sides to him&#8230; But let us draw inspiration from him because he is a product of the public school system in South Africa.&#8221; &#8211;Fred Khumalo, author and journalist, South Africa</blockquote>



However, it hasn’t been an easy ride to the top. In 2018, Tesla was in dire straits, the company was struggling to build a viable product and was hemorrhaging cash almost daily. Musk had already sunk a bulk of his early fortune in the business, some of which came from the $165 million sale of his stake in PayPal, the online payments pioneer, after his exit as CEO.



Leading the company during that time took a toll. In a very personal interview with The New York Times, Musk revealed that he was losing sleep and had spent most of his birthday working on the factory floor, where he was also spending most of his days and nights. The work had taken over to the point of almost missing Kimbal’s wedding, where he was the best man. A disheveled Musk admitted that while he regretted the havoc it wreaked on his life, he had no regrets about being so determined to pull Tesla from the brink of collapse.



“The worst is over from a Tesla operational standpoint. But from a personal pain standpoint&#8230; the worst is yet to come,” he told The New York Times.



Musk’s passion is evident in almost everything he has done, and in every business he has built. After leaving PayPal, and selling his stake in the company, he used a bulk of the $165 million fortune to found the companies that would make his name – SpaceX and Tesla. Any seasoned entrepreneur would have considered the move a risky one but Musk was quite adamant about his ambitions and making them a reality.



“I think there was like literally one week where I actually worked 120 hours and just didn’t leave the factory. I didn’t even go outside,” Musk told American television news magazine program, 60 Minutes, in 2018.



His intense work ethic has not only worked to transform Tesla but has inspired a number of other young entrepreneurs to build the electric car industry and get rich in the process.



For example, William Li, who founded electric car maker, Nio, in 2014, was 12 times richer in 2020 thanks to his shares in the U.S.-listed carmaker. In fact, he’s now among the world’s 500 richest people, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Chinese entrepreneur, He Xiaopeng, chairman of XPeng Motors, has also seen his wealth jump more than 600%. Overall, fortunes of the handful of people tracked by the Bloomberg index in the electric vehicle industry have gone up by over $140 billion including Musk’s $111 billion surge.



However, far removed from his status on the global billionaire league tables, which have come to form the foundation of his popularity, Musk maintains his very own niche but loyal following, all devoted to his Twitter feed; his preferred mode of communication. Muskians, as they are known, see him as an eclectic superhero figure of the modern age where he is at once a conscientious technology entrepreneur and demi-god.



However, in 2020, following statements made on the impact the Trump administration’s Covid-19 policy responses had on his business, Musk received heavy back- lash from the mainstream and even managed to alienate some of his loyal fans. But all is forgotten now that the South African-born entrepreneur is among the world’s richest men.



While his wealth may be a relentless conversation starter, globally, it’s hard to ignore Musk’s legacy in the business arena. The journey from a quiet, intelligent and passionate young entrepreneur to an influential manufacturing magnate has been driven not just by a belief in hard work but by an ability to settle for dreams beyond the stars.



For generations to come, his place in time will always be confirmed by his commitment to not only conjure up ‘moonshot’ ideas but to actively pursue them; to Mars and back.



&#8211;BY MARIE SHABAYA



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Rockets To Riches: The Rise And Rise Of Elon Musk

TOPLINE Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced Tuesday he will step aside as CEO of the e-commerce giant to serve as executive chairman, a move he said will give him more time to focus on his other “passions.” Here are the causes Bezos said he’ll dedicate time to.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h4>



In a Tuesday&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/email-from-jeff-bezos-to-employees" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">letter to Amazon employees</a>, Bezos said said he’ll use his new free time to focus on The Day One Fund, the $2 billion fund he&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2018/09/13/jeff-bezos-amazon-philanthropy-giving-billion-dollar-fund/?sh=743df02d1570">established in 2018</a>&nbsp;aimed at opening full-scholarship, Montessori-influenced preschools in underserved communities and funding nonprofits that support homeless families.



He also said he’ll work on the Bezos Earth Fund, which he kicked off a year ago with a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2018/09/13/jeff-bezos-amazon-philanthropy-giving-billion-dollar-fund/?sh=743df02d1570">$10 billion pledge</a>&nbsp;(almost 10% of his net worth at the time) to combat climate change by issuing grants to “scientists, activists, NGOs—any effort that offers a real possibility to help&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/02/17/jeff-bezos-pledges-to-fight-climate-change-with-10-billion-earth-fund/?sh=79b4fb8b523b">preserve and protect the natural world</a>,” Bezos said.



Bezos also has Blue Origin, his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2021/01/14/blue-origin-launches-and-lands-its-first-space-tourism-rocket-of-the-year-with-human-flights-in-sight/?sh=12878c37283e">private spaceflight company</a>, which is developing rockets for commercial space tourism that he hinted could help NASA&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2019/05/09/jeff-bezos-unveils-blue-origins-lunar-lander-announces-new-glenn-first-launch-for-2021/?sh=224700a7435a">take humans to the Moon</a>.



The billionaire said he’ll also dedicate more time to&nbsp;The Washington Post,&nbsp;which he purchased for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2013/08/05/jeff-bezos-buys-washington-post-for-250-million-less-than-1-of-his-net-worth/?sh=39ccde84331b">$250 million</a>&nbsp;in 2013, and helped to expand its digital presence and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/16/media/jeff-bezos-donald-graham/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ramp up revenue</a>.



Crucial quote



“I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on &#8230; my other passions. I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring. I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have,” Bezos said in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/email-from-jeff-bezos-to-employees" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the letter</a>&nbsp;Tuesday.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h4>



Bezos founded Amazon, which started out as an online bookstore, in 1994 out of his garage in Seattle. Now Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world, and operates ventures in streaming, entertainment, groceries, delivery and more. Bezos is worth&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2021/02/02/jeff-bezos-to-step-down-as-amazon-ceo/?sh=394328711e5d">$196.4 billion</a>, according to Forbes. Amazon announced Tuesday Bezo would&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2021/02/02/jeff-bezos-to-step-down-as-amazon-ceo/?sh=394328711e5d">step down as CEO</a>&nbsp;and be replaced by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/02/02/what-you-need-to-know-about-andy-jassy-amazons-new-ceo/">Andy Jassy</a>, who leads Amazon Web Services.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h4>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2021/02/02/jeff-bezos-to-step-down-as-amazon-ceo/?sh=394328711e5d">Jeff Bezos To Step Down As Amazon CEO</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/02/02/what-you-need-to-know-about-andy-jassy-amazons-new-ceo/">What You Need To Know About Andy Jassy, Amazon’s New CEO</a> (Forbes)



By Carlie Porterfield, Forbes Staff

Here’s What’s Next For Jeff Bezos After He Steps Down As Amazon CEO

Deep-pocketed investors and veteran entrepreneurs are rushing to bet on Amazon’s third-party sellers. The stampede will change retail forever.



Business was booming&nbsp;for Adam St. George when he decided to shop around his four-year-old brand Angry Orange Odor Eliminator. Sold primarily on Amazon, his citrus-scented pet odor remover was racking up more than $2 million in annual revenue.



Within hours of listing the operation on an online brokerage, St. George was inundated with phone calls. Planned time off to visit family in Ohio morphed into a marathon of negotiations with brokers, family offices and individual investors. The winner: consumer-products startup Thrasio, which sent a term sheet within a week of the listing and insisted on a response the next day.



“They weren’t messing around,” says St. George, 52, who sold Angry Orange for $1.4 million in 2018, a sum beyond his wildest dreams that paid for a nearly month-long vacation in Hawaii and a new fishing boat. “You get this big check and it’s like, wow. It’s a trip.”



That check, though, paled in comparison to the return expected by Thrasio, which quickly revamped Angry Orange’s operations and has since increased its annual revenue eightfold, to $16.5 million. Named after Thraso, a brave Amazonian warrior from Greek mythology, Thrasio was founded by two serial entrepreneurs in July 2018 with a single mission: to roll up third-party sellers on Amazon. Over the last two years, it has spent over $100 million snapping up nearly 100 businesses, boosting their revenue to more than $400 million; it now sells 10,000-plus items—massage guns, hiking poles and everything in between—on the nation’s biggest online retail platform.



“We are a white knight in this ecosystem,” says co-CEO Josh Silberstein, 45. His cofounder, Carlos Cashman, 48, explains: “[Amazon] has been the most potent creator of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs the world has ever seen. . . . Then, when it starts to get too complicated when [these companies] hit a certain scale, we are there.”



Silberstein and Cashman are not alone. Lots of people suddenly believe that Amazon’s small businesses represent a big opportunity. Over the last 24 months, 10 to 15 companies have raised $100 million or more apiece, totaling at least $1.5 billion, to buy up Amazon third-party sellers, according to Jason Guerrettaz, cofounder of brokerage WebsiteClosers.com. Among them are a company started by a former Wayfair executive and one from the founder of Charming Charlie, the accessories retailer that filed for bankruptcy twice.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;You have to skate to where the puck is going. It used to be in malls. Now it&#8217;s evolved to Amazon. We believe we are buying fifth avenue digital estate&#8221; </blockquote>



These entrepreneurs and their backers—including blue-chip private equity players like Advent International and JPMorgan, big venture firms including Khosla Ventures and monied individuals such as Zillow cofounder Spencer Rascoff, former Tinder CEO Elie Seidman and Los Angeles Dodgers executive Tucker Kain, are betting millions they can score big returns piggybacking on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ billions.



“The fervor in this space is absolutely crazy,” Guerrettaz says. He adds that sellers who got perhaps 50 inquiries a year or two ago now attract between 200 and 300 in just the first hour of a listing. “We probably receive 20 to 25 emails a day from different groups reminding us that they are well-funded, a buyer in this space and are looking for deals.”



It’s all part of consumers’ unstoppable migration to online shopping. Amazon is now the world’s third-most-valuable company, with a $1.57 trillion market cap that lags only Apple’s ($2.03 trillion) and Microsoft’s ($1.64 trillion). The Seattle-based giant sold $335 billion worth of products in 2019, according to&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/amazon-gmv-in-2019" target="_blank">Marketplace Pulse</a>, up 21% from the prior year. Amazon accounts for roughly 40% of all e-commerce spending in the United States, according to&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-remains-the-undisputed-no-1" target="_blank">eMarketer</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



One of the biggest&nbsp;upsides for this new wave of savvy investors comes from the fact that these Amazon retailers are getting traction despite being run by amateurs. “There are very few [Amazon] brands you look at and say you can’t squeeze some more out of it,” says Chris Fryburger, founder of Cincinnati-based nReach, which helps connect Amazon sellers with lawyers, marketing firms and other experts. “No one is really doing Amazon well.” As an early employee at Fundbox, a fintech that offers lines of credit to small businesses, Rymarz witnessed firsthand the number of successful, fast-growing online entrepreneurs who were just one invoice away from going out of business. “It’s the winner’s curse,” he says. He helped Fundbox speed up its loan process by integrating its software into accounting platforms like Intuit’s QuickBooks, through which many small businesses already managed their books. In 2019, he flew to Seattle to meet with Amazon executives about a similar partnership for its third-party sellers.



“I felt like I had been asleep under a rock. [Amazon’s] marketplace had gotten big almost overnight,” says Rymarz, 36, who joined Fundbox in 2014 after stints at Goldman Sachs and TPG. He started studying the seller base and quickly realized that most individual sellers remained very small, even as Amazon had gotten enormous. Although Amazon provided a lot of tools to sellers, there were still gaps, particularly when it came to using data to evaluate the competitive landscape and decide when to pull various levers, such as increasing ad spending or prices. “It’s easy to get started,” Rymarz says. “It’s very hard to grow.”



Excited by what he was learning, Rymarz left Fundbox in June and by July had&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurendebter/2020/11/18/heyday-raises-175-million-series-a-to-buy-grow-amazon-businesses/?sh=2ea7ae5744a5">raised $175 million</a>&nbsp;from blue-chip investors General Catalyst, Khosla and Arbor Ventures to start Heyday, which aims to acquire, launch and grow third-party sellers. He has been actively acquiring merchants with revenue between $1 million and $25 million that he believes have the potential to be ten times larger. He is also launching several new Amazon brands of his own, though he won’t divulge any details about them. “You’re going to see brands like Warby Parker now born on Amazon,” he says. “You’re going to see hundreds of Ankers.”



Anker, a Shenzhen, China-based maker of phone chargers and battery packs, is the most successful independent merchant started on Amazon to date and yet another reason why so many investors are rushing in. It racked up just under $1 billion in revenue in 2019 and&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2020-08-25/phone-charger-maker-anker-doubles-to-8-billion-on-debut-video" target="_blank">went public in China in August</a>. It’s now valued at nearly $11 billion.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h2 class="has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">Merchant Makeovers</h2>



THRASIO BUYS AMAZON THIRD-PARTY SELLERS AND THEN RUNS THEM THROUGH A RIGOROUS, 503-POINT CHECKLIST TO GOOSE SALES AND PROFITS. BELOW ARE A FEW SUCCESS STORIES.



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>ANGRY ORANGE Designed slick new packaging for pet odor remover, partnered with pet social media influencers. Sales increased eightfold to $16.5 million in two years</li><li>BEAST GEAR Added new keywords for jump ropes, like “boxing,” “weightlifting” and “functional fitness”. Sales increased by 74% year-to-date</li><li>CREATIVE SPACE Reduced the edges of a whiteboard&nbsp;by two inches. Saved $75,000 a year on shipping </li><li>DESKCYCLE Secured placement on Amazon&#8217;s new influencer Livestream program for miniature stationary bicycles. Sales jumped 667% in one day</li></ul>



If Anker is the most successful third-party merchant, then Thrasio can claim bragging rights as the leader among the roll-up artists. In just over two years, it has raised more than $500 million from, among others, Boston-based private equity giant Advent International, Seamless founder Jason Finger and Atlantic Records CEO Craig Kallman, including a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/thrasio-reaches-1b-valuation-sets-new-us-speed-record-for-unicorns-301093829.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$260 million round</a>&nbsp;it announced in July at a valuation of $1 billion. It now claims to be one of the 25 biggest sellers on Amazon.



The key, according to Silberstein, is an effective “block and tackle” strategy. Every new business acquired by Thrasio is put on the so-called conveyor belt, where a core team of a half-dozen employees works through a 503-point checklist of best practices in an average of 34 days, farming out tasks to a deep bench of specialists in supply chain, legal and other departments as needed. For instance, the creative team makes sure each listing has at least seven high-resolution images that take up 80% or 90% of the allotted space on the online display page (larger images lead more people to click).



After buying Angry Orange, Thrasio introduced slick new packaging and partnered with pet influencers like Two Himalayan Cats, whose cute social-media posts drove not just clicks but sales, helping boost all-important conversion rates. Thrasio also identified a few dozen new relevant search keywords (such as cat urine odor eliminator and pet candle) and became the number one Amazon result for the majority of them. It’s now launching add-on products such as a spray canister with an attached black light, having noticed that pet owners most frequently purchased their odor removers with a separate black light to help them locate urine on the carpet. All these little moves add up to big revenue gains.



“We can help companies in so many ways that they just don’t have the capability to do as a small company,” says David Mussafer, chairman of Advent International.



For decades, consumer-products giants like Unilever and Procter &amp; Gamble have paid huge fees to secure prime shelf space at grocery stores and spent heavily on TV advertising to drive sales. In the digital world, neither matters much. “If you think about the competitive advantages that Procter &amp; Gamble, Unilever, and Newell enjoyed 15 years ago, and you ask which of these are important today, the answer is none of them,” says Thrasio’s Silberstein.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;The concern is that companies are building upon rented landed, relying on Amazon to let them play in its sandbox.&#8221;</blockquote>



Amazon is now the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.emarketer.com/content/looking-for-a-new-product-you-probably-searched-amazon" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first stop</a>&nbsp;for the majority of Americans looking to buy basically anything. In the digital world, search-engine optimization strategies to pop products to the top of Amazon results and online reviews play key roles. “The customer is telling us they care more about reviews than brand name,” says Chris Bell, a former Bain Capital and Wayfair executive who started roll-up company Perch last year. “They care more about reviews than [that] they saw an ad on television.”



Some traditional retail executives are clamoring to get in on the action. That includes onetime hotshot Charlie Chanaratsopon, who opened his first women’s fashion accessories store in 2004 at age 26. In less than a decade, he was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2013/11/27/speed-demon-how-charming-charlie-chanaratsopon-built-a-billion-dollar-fashion-chain-in-under-a-decade/?sh=58fb000f2dc3">worth an estimated half-billion dollars</a>&nbsp;and had opened nearly 300 brightly colored Charming Charlie stores across America, each blaring pop music while shoppers browsed $15 scarves and $9 sunglasses. At its peak in 2014, Chanaratsopon’s chain pulled in $550 million in sales. But he got burned chasing success in suburban shopping malls; he stepped down in 2017, just before the company declared bankruptcy for the first time. It filed for bankruptcy again in 2019, and that July announced it was shutting all its stores.



Now, Chanaratsopon says he’s ready to “ride the rising tide and tailwinds” of Amazon. Boosted Commerce, which he cofounded with tech veteran Keith Richman in January,&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/boosted-commerce-announces-87-million-in-funding-acquisition-of-six-amazon-fulfilment-companies-301133063.html" target="_blank">raised $87 million</a>&nbsp;in September and has already acquired 10 companies that sell a hodgepodge of products from greeting cards to an antifungal body wash that treats jock itch. He and Richman say they chose these businesses in part for their good reviews and high search ranking. “I’m not a big hockey guy, but to quote Wayne Gretzky, you have to skate to where the puck is going,” Chanaratsopon says. “It used to be in malls. Now it’s evolved to Amazon. We believe we are buying Fifth Avenue digital real estate.”



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



As foolproof&nbsp;as all this sounds, there is plenty of room to fail. Richard Jalichandra, a 58-year-old tech executive, had been running an online supplements company called BodyBuilding.com that was getting destroyed by rivals on Amazon. Sure, competitors like GNC and The Vitamin Shoppe were moving to the platform, but the real threat came from the multitude of mom-and-pop businesses peddling their own supplement brands. “It was like death by a thousand paper cuts,” says Jalichandra, who previously ran a workout-app company called MapMyFitness, which Under Armour purchased for $150 million in 2013.



That’s when he decided to go along rather than fight. He started 101 Commerce in 2017 and raised over $10 million the next year from VC backers including Austin, Texas-based Next Coast Ventures. Its audacious goal: to buy 101 Amazon merchants in two years. His firm analyzed 400 potential acquisitions in just two months and bought 10 of them. Then his investors got cold feet, deciding it was going to take too much time, money and resources to juggle dozens of brands. Jalichandra left in 2019, and 101 Commerce merged with Goja, run by a veteran independent seller from Florida, which had the technology and the manpower in place to oversee and optimize listings. At the time of the merger, JPMorgan, Next Coast and others put another $20 million into the company, which now has 110 employees who manage the new acquisitions.



“I don’t know how these other companies are doing it, because the risk and undertaking are not insignificant,” says Thomas Ball, cofounder and managing director of Next Coast. “You can’t bake a cake in 20 minutes at 900 degrees. It takes an hour at 300 degrees.”



Another problem: rising prices as too much money chases too few good deals. “I hate to say this, but brands that have no business being worth a lot of money are going to be worth a lot of money,” says James Thomson, a former Amazon executive and chief strategy officer at Utah-based Buy Box Experts, which helps brands sell on Amazon.



“My concern about this model is you are building upon rented land,” says Chris Yates, who runs Centurica, a due-diligence service for online acquisitions. “You are relying on Amazon to let you play in their sandbox.”



For now, Amazon claims it’s happy to share its space. “The emergence of these companies reflects how selling with Amazon offers small businesses powerful opportunities to build their brands and reach millions of customers,” says an Amazon spokesperson. Still, some are hedging: Boosted Commerce, for instance, also lists products on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Walmart.com and a stand-alone website powered by Shopify, as well as Amazon.



Because Amazon still dominates online retail, though, most roll-up players have decided it’s worth the risk. The upside of piggybacking off the Bezos behemoth is just that big. Says Thrasio’s Silberstein: “If we exited at $10 billion, I’d give myself a C-minus, at $25 billion, B-plus. If we exited at $50 billion to $100 billion, A-minus.”



&#8211;By Lauren Debter, Forbes Staff

Tag: Amazon

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