Amazon's Jeff Bezos looks to the future

Amazon is the world's largest online retailer, serving 225M customers. What's next for the company that prides itself on disrupting tradition?

There has never been a company quite like Amazon. Conceived as an online book seller, Amazon has reinvented itself time and again, changing the way the world shops, reads and computes. Amazon has 225 million customers around the world. Its goal is to sell everything to everyone. The brainchild of Jeff Bezos, Amazon prides itself on disrupting the traditional way of doing things. A few weeks ago the company announced it was launching Sunday delivery.

Tonight, for the first time, you will be introduced to perhaps Amazon’s boldest venture ever.

Over the last month, 60 Minutes was granted unprecedented access inside Amazon’s operations. If you have ever wondered what happens after you’ve clicked and placed an order on Amazon, take a look. If there is such a thing as Santa’s workshop, this would be it.

A 1.2 million square foot distribution center, the size of more than 20 football fields, gearing up for the holiday shopping season.

There are 96 of these warehouses worldwide, what Amazon calls fulfillment centers. Tomorrow, on what is known as Cyber Monday, it’s expected that more than 300 items a second will be ordered on Amazon.

Jeff Bezos: If you go back in time 18 years, I was driving the packages to the post office myself, and we were very primitive.

Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon, with an estimated worth of at least $25 billion. He sold his first book on Amazon in another era, back in 1995.

If you go back in time 18 years, I was driving the packages to the post office myself, and we were very primitive."

Charlie Rose: Part of what Amazon customers expect—we want it now. What’s happening at the fulfillment centers that have made that possible?

Jeff Bezos: The secret is we’re on, like, our seventh generation of fulfillment centers. And we have gotten better every time. When I was driving the packages myself, one of my visualizations of success is that we might one day be big enough that we could afford a forklift. And…