经典重读|亚马逊股东信(2009)

米米米米饭团

2009年是开花结果的一年，亚马逊各业务条线都呈现了惊人的增长。Kindle电子书从去年的25万种上升至46万种，电商平台的活跃第三方卖家数达190万，AWS推出“关系数据库”、“虚拟私有云”。强劲的基本面叠加“量化宽松”的宏观背景，亚马逊当年市值上涨172%，达597.3亿。当年自由现金流29.2亿，同比增长114%；营收249.1亿，同比增长28%。亚马逊对2010年452个运营目标的简要分析中我们可以看到亚马逊对“用户体验”的关注明显高于“财务指标”。在贝索斯眼中，用户体验是“终极目标”，而“财务指标”是向目标挺进过程中的结果。

——国盛社服  焦俊 

致我们的股东：
2009年的财务业绩反映了我们15年来改进用户体验所带来的累积效应：日渐丰富的商品种类，快捷的物流，成本结构的降低，使得我们能够为用户提供前所未有的廉价商品，以及各种各样的服务。这一业绩是公司各个部门众多有才华、忠诚于用户的同仁共同努力实现的。我们为我们的价格低廉、物流保证、种类齐全感到自豪。我们也知道，我们的工作尚有不足的地方，我们将致力于进一步完善。
2009年主要业绩

• 2009年亚马逊净营收为245.1亿美元，同比增长28％。这是10年前净营收的15倍，当时的净营收只有16.4亿美元。
  
• 2009年亚马逊自由现金流为29.2亿美元，同比增长114％。
  
• 更多的用户在加入Amazon Prime，在世界范围内，这项服务的会员数同比有显著增长。
  
• 2009年，亚马逊库存的商品种类同比增长50％以上。
  
• 2009年，亚马逊新增21个来自世界各地的商品种类，包括日本的汽车、法国的布娃娃、以及中国的鞋和服装。
  
• 2009年，对于我们的鞋类部门来说是个业务繁忙的一年。11月，我们收购了Zappos。Zappos是一家领先的服装和鞋类商品在线零售商，致力于为用户提供最好的服务和选择。Zappos的加入，使用户在Endless、Javari、Amazon和Shopbop平台上有了更多的选择。
  
• 我们的服装团队继续完善用户体验，2009年推出了Denim Shop，可以提供100多个品牌的牛仔裤，包括Joe’s Jeans、Lucky Brand、7 for all Mankind和Levi’s等。
  
• 鞋类和服装团队制作了12万种以上的产品说明，向网站上传了220万张以上的图片，为用户提供了生动的购物体验。
  
• 亚马逊全球网站有约700万条用户评论。
  
• 2009年我们销售额的30%来自于我们网站上的第三方卖家。2009年活跃第三方卖家的帐户数达到190万个，同比增长24％。在全球范围内，使用亚马逊物流服务的第三方卖家在我们的物流中心网络存放了超过100万件各种商品，保证亚马逊免费送货服务和Amazon Prime的会员可以及时收到从第三方卖家购买到的商品。
  
• 2009年，亚马逊云计算服务AWS继续加快其创新步伐，推出的新的服务和功能，包括亚马逊关系数据库服务(ARDS, Amazon Relational Database Service)、虚拟私有云(VPC)、Elastic MapReduce云服务、超大内存云主机等等。AWS还不断扩大其业务的全球覆盖范围，包括在欧洲增加新的服务，在北加州新建一个数据中心，并计划于2010年将服务扩展至亚太地区。不断创新和良好的经营业绩使AWS的用户在2009年获得前所未有的增长，其中包括许多大型企业。
  
• 美国地区Kindle Store电子书店目前拥有图书的数量，从去年的25万种增加到46万种，其中包括《纽约时报》110种最畅销图书中的103种。Kindle Store还拥有8,900个以上的博客，提供171种美国和国际权威报纸和杂志。我们已在120多个国家推出Kindle Store，并提供六种不同语言的内容。
  

新加入亚马逊的高管通常会很惊讶地发现，我们很少花时间讨论财务业绩结果或预测。要说明的是，我们很重视财务业绩，但我们认为将精力集中于控制业务开支上，长期上来说是提升财务业绩的最有效方式。我们在每年的秋季开始设定下一年的年度经营目标，并在假日销售旺季结束后的新一年的年初完成。我们设定年度经营目标的过程是漫长、充满激情和注重细节的。
我们每年的年度目标都对我们要提供的用户体验设定一个很高标准，并急切希望进一步完善用户体验。多年来，我们设定年度目标的过程都很相似。2010年，我们设定了452个具体目标，每个目标都切实可行并规定了完工日期。
我们的团队不只是设定了这些目标，但我们觉得这些目标对于股东来说最重要。这些目标都不容易实现，许多要有所发明创造。每年，我们的高管团队内部要数次评估这些目标的进展，根据实际情况增加、删除或修正一些目标。
通过对我们当前目标的评估，可以发现一些有趣的数据：

• 452个目标中有360个目标将直接影响用户体验。
  
• 这些目标中“营收”一词用了八次，“自由现金流”只有四次。
  
• 在452目标中，净利润、毛利率或运营利润率这些词语一次都没有使用。
  

整体上，设定目标的过程是对我们基本经营方法的阐述：从用户需求出发，反向决定做什么工作。听取用户的意见，但并不仅限于此——还要在此基础上有所创新。我们不能向您保证，我们将实现今年所有的目标。过去几年，我们也没有实现所有的目标。但我们可以向您保证，我们将执着于用户体验）。我们坚定地认为，我们的经营方法长期上完全有利于股东，也完全有利于用户。
依照惯例，随信附上亚马逊1997年致股东的信。我们从未更改我们的经营之道，今天仍然是亚马逊的“第一天”。

杰夫. 贝索斯

亚马逊创始人、首席执行官

To our shareholders:
The financial results for 2009 reflect the cumulative effect of 15 years of customer experience improvements: increasing selection, speeding delivery, reducing cost structure so we can afford to offer customers ever-lower prices, and many others. This work has been done by a large number of smart, relentless, customer-devoted people across all areas of the company. We are proud of our low prices, our reliable delivery, and our in-stock position on even obscure and hard-to-find items. We also know that we can still be much better, and we’re dedicated to improving further.
Some notable highlights from 2009
• Net sales increased 28% year-over-year to $24.51 billion in 2009. This is 15 times higher than net sales 10 years ago when they were $1.64 billion in 1999.
• Free cash flow increased 114% year-over-year to $2.92 billion in 2009.
• More customers are taking advantage of Amazon Prime, with worldwide memberships up significantly over last year. The number of different items available for immediate shipment grew more than 50% in 2009.
• We added 21 new product categories around the world in 2009, including Automotive in Japan, Baby in France, and Shoes and Apparel in China.
• It was a busy year for our shoes business. In November we acquired Zappos, a leader in online apparel and footwear sales that strives to provide shoppers with the best possible service and selection. Zappos is a terrific addition to our Endless, Javari, Amazon, and Shopbop selection.
• The apparel team continued to enhance customer experience with the launch of our Denim Shop offering 100 brands, including Joe’s Jeans, Lucky Brand, 7 For All Mankind, and Levi’s.
• The shoes and apparel teams created over 121,000 product descriptions and uploaded over 2.2 million images to the website providing customers with a vivid shopping experience.
• Approximately 7 million customer reviews were added to websites worldwide.
• Sales of products by third party sellers on our websites represented 30% of unit sales in 2009. Active seller accounts increased 24% to 1.9 million for the year. Globally, sellers using Fulfillment By Amazon stowed more than one million unique items in our fulfillment center network, thereby making these items available for Free Super Saver Shipping and Amazon Prime.
• Amazon Web Services continued its rapid pace of innovation, launching many new services and features, including the Amazon Relational Database Service, Virtual Private Cloud, Elastic MapReduce, High-Memory EC2 Instances, Reserved and Spot Instances, Streaming for Amazon CloudFront, and Versioning for Amazon S3. AWS also continued to expand its global footprint to include additional services in the EU, a new Northern California Region and plans for a presence in the Asia-Pacific Region in 2010. The continued innovation and track record for operational performance helped AWS add more customers in 2009 than ever before, including many large enterprise customers.
• The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 460,000 books, an increase from 250,000 last year, and includes 103 of the 110 New York Times Bestsellers, more than 8,900 blogs, and 171 top U.S. and International newspapers and magazines. We have shipped Kindles to more than 120 countries, and we now provide content in six different languages.
Senior leaders that are new to Amazon are often surprised by how little time we spend discussing actual financial results or debating projected financial outputs. To be clear, we take these financial outputs seriously, but we believe that focusing our energy on the controllable inputs to our business is the most effective way to maximize financial outputs over time. Our annual goal setting process begins in the fall, and concludes early in the new year after we’ve completed our peak holiday quarter. Our goal setting sessions are lengthy, spirited, and detail- oriented. We have a high bar for the experience our customers deserve and a sense of urgency to improve that experience.
We’ve been using this same annual process for many years. For 2010, we have 452 detailed goals with owners, deliverables, and targeted completion dates. These are not the only goals our teams set for themselves, but they are the ones we feel are most important to monitor. None of these goals are easy and many will not be achieved without invention. We review the status of each of these goals several times per year among our senior leadership team and add, remove, and modify goals as we proceed.
A review of our current goals reveals some interesting statistics:
• 360 of the 452 goals will have a direct impact on customer experience.
• The word revenue is used eight times and free cash flow is used only four times.
• In the 452 goals, the terms net income, gross profit or margin, and operating profit are not used once.
Taken as a whole, the set of goals is indicative of our fundamental approach. Start with customers, and work backwards. Listen to customers, but don’t just listen to customers – also invent on their behalf. We can’t assure you that we’ll meet all of this year’s goals. We haven’t in past years. However, we can assure you that we’ll continue to obsess over customers. We have strong conviction that that approach – in the long term – is every bit as good for owners as it is for customers.
As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. Our approach remains the same, and it’s still Day 1.

 

Jeffrey P. Bezos

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Amazon.com, Inc.

（特别鸣谢本文编辑：陈俊彦）

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