The race is on! Likely feeling some heat from Target’s recent announcement that it is investing $100 million to scale up its ability to deliver packages the next day and Walmart pumping up its “last mile” effort to get packages on doorsteps quicker, Amazon says bring it!
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the online retailer said it too will grow its “same-day site” warehouses and could expand to at least 150 in the next several years.
How much of a game-changer is this? Potentially huge. As Marc Wulfraat, president of MWPVL International, a global supply chain and logistics firm explained it to RetailDive, Amazon would build a combination fulfillment center and delivery station which would enable customers to get any of 100,000 items delivered within hours when all the elements are in place.
Wulfraat said that an order could be picked up within 15-30 minutes of a customer placing the order, then rushed to an Amazon Flex driver who puts the package in their car and gets it on the customer’s doorstep within four hours.
Amazon making a move for grocery dominance, too
Amazon also wants to pump up its grocery business, too. In a recent earnings call, Andy Jassy, the company’s CEO, said that even though the company’s Whole Foods chain continues to grow and is perfect for those who want a physical store experience, Amazon’s crystal ball shows that, over time, grocery shopping is going to shift to being more omnichannel.
“There are going to be a lot of people that order their grocery items online and have it delivered to them, and there are going to be a lot of people who continue to buy in physical stores,” Jassy said.
“But you're going to also see a hybrid of those, where people pick out what they want online and pick it up in stores, or people are in stores and there's something that's not in inventory in the stores, so they go to their app or to a kiosk and order it to be delivered from online.”
Jassy said that the wheels are already turning in the omnichannel direction due to the love the company’s Amazon Fresh is getting now.
“We're doing a fair bit of experimentation today in those stores to try to find a format that we think resonates with customers.”