JEFF BEZOS is one of life's extroverts. The founder and chief executive of Amazon.com bounds across the room to meet you. He talks quickly, laughs frequently, and loudly. His staff say that when he meets the news media his appearances are more akin to rock concerts than Press conferences. He is constantly on the move. At work he claims never to use the lifts, only the stairs - it is a 12-storey building.
Amazon.com has expanded from being an online bookstore to encompass, among other products, music, videos and toys, making it, the company claims, the world's top e-commerce firm. Mr Bezos is an almost iconic figure in the business, his pronouncements eagerly awaited by analysts wanting to know his thoughts about where the industry is heading.
But as with other Internet businesses, Amazon's share price has taken a pounding in the past year, as the market has taken a more realistic view of online profits. From a year's high of nearly US$50 the stock is just under US$17, although that is a big improvement on its year-low of just over US$8, touched in April.
I asked how he had felt during such a roller coaster ride.
'Internally, we have a very solid grasp on the fact that the company is not the stock,' he said.
'In retrospect it is clear to everybody that 1999 was a very significant stock-market bubble, and for us to measure ourselves against that some way - I don't think we would do that.
'Instead we are focused on the metrics of the business. We are looking at the operating loss as a percentage of sales, we are looking at the number of customers who shop with us at any given period of time.'
