Netflix Overview

Company background

Netflix is an online movie rental subscription service providing nearly 12 million subscribers access to more than 100,000 DVD titles. The company operates in the US. The company is headquartered in Los Gatos, California and employs about 4,080 people out of which 2,197 are part-time employees.

Netflix is one of the world's largest online movie rental services with a 12 million subscriber base. The company has over 100,000 DVD titles and a library of over 17,000 titles which can be streamed online. Netflix offers personalized movie recommendations to its members and has approximately three billion movie ratings. The company, in addition, allows members to share and recommend movies to one another through its Friends feature.

Netflix has established revenue sharing relationships with several studios and distributors. It purchases titles directly from studios, distributors and other suppliers. Netflix promotes its service through online promotions, television and radio advertising, package inserts, direct mail and other promotions with third parties.

The company ships and receives DVDs throughout the US. Netflix maintains a nationwide network of shipping centers that allow the company to provide fast delivery and return service to subscribers. The company delivers DVDs directly to the member's address by mail with a postage-paid return envelope. Netflix also streams movies instantly to members' TVs, through Netflix Player by Roku, and personal computers, at no additional cost. In addition, Netflix partners with consumer electronics manufacturers like LG Electronics and Microsoft Xbox 360 which provide for streaming content from Netflix in their appliances.

Reed Hastings founded Netflix in 1997. Netflix opened the world's first internet store to offer DVD rentals in early 1998.

Netflix's inventory of DVD movies available for rental surpassed the 2,000 titles mark in 1998, making the company the world's largest DVD rental store. In the same year, Netflix and Amazon.com entered into a marketing relationship under which Netflix would direct its customers to Amazon.com for DVD purchases and Amazon.com would offer its customers special promotions for DVD rentals at Netflix.

Netflix secured a $30 million investment from the internationally renowned luxury products group, Group Arnault in 1999. The company launched its subscription service in the same year.

The company opened two distribution centers in Dallas, Texas, and Stamford, Connecticut in 2002. In the following year, Netflix opened two shipping centers to serve the greater Greensboro and Rochester areas.

Netflix and TiVo signed an agreement in 2004 to develop a joint entertainment offering under which the two companies would develop technology and work with Hollywood