Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Releases Annual Shareholder’s Letter

• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed that Amazon has over 100 million Prime members.
• Amazon Prime is a membership plan that offers a slew of perks to shoppers at Amazon as well as access to the company's streaming service. 
• The e-commerce giant shipped over 5 billion products through Prime in 2017.

Amazon’s annual shareholder's letter was revealed earlier today by CEO Jeff Bezos. Bezos mentioned 2017 saw Amazon reach 100 million Prime members and 5 billion products shipped through the service. Before this, the e-commerce giant never disclosed any information regarding the number of subscribers across the globe.

Image Courtesy of Money Control

After years of secrecy and speculation, we now have information on how successful and popular the premium service is. In the US, the subscription charges for Amazon Prime are $99 annually which involves two-day shipping, Prime Video, Prime Music, Twitch Prime and more.

"How do you stay ahead of ever-rising customer expectations? There's no single way to do it – it's a combination of many things. But high standards (widely deployed and at all levels of detail) are certainly a big part of it," Bezos wrote in the annual shareholder's letter.

Prime members will be receiving access to Whole Foods, Amazon’s venture into physical grocery stores soon. The technical work is still underway according to Bezos. Amazon not only sold a staggering 5 billion items through Amazon Prime, but they also sold the most number of Echo devices in the company’s history.

The annual letter is published by Amazon every year since 1997 and is considered to be a must-read for any business professional because of the Amazon CEO’s insights included in them. This year’s letter focuses on the high standards set by the company while doing its business.

Bezos believes that high standards are teachable and once it is embedded in an organization, it becomes contagious and spreads among members. He said you need to recognize the standards you can aim for and set goals to achieve them. But they have to be domain specific goals because an organization simply can’t jump from one business to another. Bezos concluded his letter stating building a culture of high standards is worth the effort and it can offer several benefits to business owners.

Amazon shows no signs of slowing down with impressive sales figures and a lineup of new products coming out this year. They recently launched “Fire TV” OS smart TVs recently in partnership with Toshiba and Insignia and more products including Alexa and Echo devices are set to launch later this year.