Fast and furious… Amazon’s putting its same-day biz into hyperdrive. Yesterday the ecomm titan said it delivered 1.8B+ one-day and same-day Prime packages so far this year — 4X as many as in 2019. It’s ramped up its fast-delivery options by same-day-shipping everything from iPads to instant coffee. Last quarter, over half of Prime orders in the 60 biggest cities were delivered within one day or the same day. Now:
Long list: Amazon plans to double its same-day warehouses, which could mean building dozens of new facilities.
Short trip: It says same-day shipping can curb costs by cutting package travel distance by 15%. Touchpoints, aka the # of times a package is handled, drop by 12%.
America’s need for speed… Amazon makes up over a third of all US online shopping and has been investing heavily to make same-day and one-day deliveries the norm. McKinsey said almost half of shoppers will ditch their e-carts if shipping times are too long or aren't visible. Now other retailers are hopping on the ASAP delivery trend to keep up. Walmart has nearly tripled sales of its store-fulfilled delivery over the past two years, and Target plans to spend $100M to grow its next-day-delivery biz.
Setting a high bar has risks… Amazon has set the gold standard for quick delivery, but it needs to hold the rep to keep dominating. While Amazon’s still by far the ecomm leader, brick-and-mortar giants like Walmart can catch up by using their sprawling network of stores as fulfillment hubs. Meanwhile, some analysts worry that Amazon's upfront building costs may affect its bottom line. We could get more delivery updates when Amazon reports Thursday.