The Amazon. com business strategy was often met with skepticism. Financial journalists and analysts disparaged the company by referring to it as Amazon. bomb. Doubters claimed Amazon. com ultimately would lose in the marketplace to established bookselling chains, such as Borders and Barnes & Noble, once they had launched competing e-commerce sites. The lack of company profits until the final quarter of 2001 seemed to justify its critics. However, Bezos dismissed naysayers as not understanding the massive growth potential of the Internet. He argued that to succeed as an online retailer, a company needed to Get Big Fast, a slogan he had printed on employee T-shirts. In fact, Amazon. com did grow fast, reaching 180,000 customer accounts by December 1996, after its first full year in operation, and less than a year later, in October 1997, it had 1,000,000 customer accounts. Its revenues jumped from $15.7 million in 1996 to $148 million in 1997, followed by $610 million in 1998. Amazon. com's success propelled its founder to become Time magazine's 1999 Person of the Year.

The company expanded rapidly in other areas. Its Associates program, where other Web sites could offer merchandise for sale and Amazon. com would fill the order and pay a commission, grew from one such site in 1996 to more than 350,000 by 1999. Following Bezos's initial strategy, the company quickly began selling more than books. Music and video sales started in 1998. That same year it began international operations with the acquisition of online booksellers in the United Kingdom and Germany. By 1999 the company was also selling consumer electronics, video games, software, home-improvement items, toys and games, and much more.

In three to four complete sentences, explain how the author introduces and develops his ideas.