Fortune 500 company Amazon initially sold books when it launched as an online bookstore in 1995.
Jeff Bezos founded the company in 1994, originally naming it Cadabra, Inc. The business began operations the following year from a Bellevue, Washington, garage and focused on books because an online catalog could offer far more titles than a physical shop.
Amazon’s first sale was a book titled Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies by Douglas Hofstadter. The company expanded beyond books into music, video, electronics, household goods, and eventually cloud computing and digital services.
Amazon is often described as having started in Seattle because its early corporate headquarters were there. Its operational beginnings, however, are associated with Bezos’s Bellevue home and garage. The company’s name changed from Cadabra to Amazon in 1994.