13 ms·

I think you hit the nail on the head where Amazon needs to go. Logistics and shipping are pretty much where that company must go to continue its path. I wouldnt

by S_A_P 13y ago

I think you hit the nail on the head where Amazon needs to go. Logistics and shipping are pretty much where that company must go to continue its path. I wouldnt be surprised if Amazon did try to venture into that arena by acquisition/merger.

xsace 13y ago
Here where I live, AMZ has partnered with some terrible delivery companies, and a lot of buyers are complaining about the awful shipping experience and are starting to look elsewhere. So I suppose that's correct, they need to handle that themselves.
- mikeash 13y ago
  They use LaserShip for a lot of deliveries here. They seem to have improved lately, but they used to be tremendously bad. They'd deliver packages a day after their tracking system said they were delivered, they'd just lose stuff, once they delivered my package to the wrong city. On the flip side, I have to wonder if this is actually something of a benefit for Amazon. They get to save a ton of money by using a cheap delivery service, but the delivery service takes much of the heat for bad service. I'm a little annoyed with Amazon for using LaserShip, but I'm much more annoyed with LaserShip for sucking. If Amazon handled the delivery, they would have to do better just to get the same amount of satisfaction from me.
  - smackfu 13y ago
    It seems like Lasership is basically "some dude with a car". If you start measuring metrics in that situation, it tends to lead to people lying, like marking a package delivered when it isn't. Only 1% of people will actually complain. http://www.lasership.com/contact-us/independent-contractors http://www.lasership.com/contact-us/independent-contractors
    - mikeash 13y ago
      They really are hilariously unprofessional. They drive shoddy white vans with "PACKAGE DELIVERY" slapped on the side. It doesn't even say "LaserShip". The vans look like the kind of thing a pedophile would drive while looking for children to kidnap.
peteretep 13y ago
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200742950 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId...
jb17 13y ago
I think they already started going there, at least in the UK. All my latest orders were delivered by 'Amazon Logistics'.
- awjr 13y ago
  I've just integrated all of our 7,000+ products into Amazon and one of the things Amazon is trying to do now is persuade us to use Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA). It's quite attractive to us as a retailer as they take all the negative feedback, handle returns, etc etc. FBA makes us, as a retailer, look good and saves us money (no shipping costs), while protecting our reputation. From a logistics point of view it simplifies things immensely (we just need to manage stocks in another warehouse). Coding this should, however, be interesting :)
  - cm2012 13y ago
    I would love to chat with you (email in profile). We have 20,000 products in FBA right now and I've been selling on Amazon for years with separate companies. The only issue is that you can't ship international multichannel yet, even if you get your products approved for Global Export.
  - bpicolo 13y ago
    The odd thing I see with fulfilled by Amazon is that nothing is necessarily stopping them from buying the goods themselves and selling them in the long run if they see fit.
- msy 13y ago
  Amazon logistics in the UK at least seems to be a cover for using a variety of no-name low-cost couriers, which for me at least has resulted in most deliveries now involving at least one fake 'delivery attempt' and needless runaround. I'm starting to buy things elsewhere as a result, it's not worth the hassle.
  - nicholassmith 13y ago
    I'll purposefully try and pick an option that results in a DHL delivery to avoid the risk of Yodel/Hermes instead, as they're just awful.
mmahemoff 13y ago
Makes sense Amazon would start a logistics service for other businesses to use. And maybe storage too. AWS and MechTurk both came from Amazon realising it could commoditise and spin off what it was using internally as separate products. A kind of reverse dogfooding.
hershel 13y ago
My guess is 3rd party logistics. If you follow amazon, you see 3pl logistics's share of the company revenue growing. And they ordered a place at 2015 in an important supply chain convention. They will probably be announcing some sort of global supply chain and fulfillment service. And the building blocks look interesting: robots, amazon level customer service and fulfillment, better supplier financing(enabled by sales data), global handling services(customs ,etc), offering better IT tools(for example demand prediction, A/B testing globally), Advertising deals on the amazon platform, etc. Almost like telling the manufacturer: you just build stuff, we'll do the rest for you. If this guess is true, seeing all this packaged would be very interesting.

by S_A_P 13y ago

xsace 13y ago

Here where I live, AMZ has partnered with some terrible delivery companies, and a lot of buyers are complaining about the awful shipping experience and are starting to look elsewhere. So I suppose that's correct, they need to handle that themselves.

mikeash 13y ago
They use LaserShip for a lot of deliveries here. They seem to have improved lately, but they used to be tremendously bad. They'd deliver packages a day after their tracking system said they were delivered, they'd just lose stuff, once they delivered my package to the wrong city. On the flip side, I have to wonder if this is actually something of a benefit for Amazon. They get to save a ton of money by using a cheap delivery service, but the delivery service takes much of the heat for bad service. I'm a little annoyed with Amazon for using LaserShip, but I'm much more annoyed with LaserShip for sucking. If Amazon handled the delivery, they would have to do better just to get the same amount of satisfaction from me.
- smackfu 13y ago
  It seems like Lasership is basically "some dude with a car". If you start measuring metrics in that situation, it tends to lead to people lying, like marking a package delivered when it isn't. Only 1% of people will actually complain. http://www.lasership.com/contact-us/independent-contractors http://www.lasership.com/contact-us/independent-contractors
  - mikeash 13y ago
    They really are hilariously unprofessional. They drive shoddy white vans with "PACKAGE DELIVERY" slapped on the side. It doesn't even say "LaserShip". The vans look like the kind of thing a pedophile would drive while looking for children to kidnap.

peteretep 13y ago

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200742950 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId...

jb17 13y ago

I think they already started going there, at least in the UK. All my latest orders were delivered by 'Amazon Logistics'.

awjr 13y ago
I've just integrated all of our 7,000+ products into Amazon and one of the things Amazon is trying to do now is persuade us to use Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA). It's quite attractive to us as a retailer as they take all the negative feedback, handle returns, etc etc. FBA makes us, as a retailer, look good and saves us money (no shipping costs), while protecting our reputation. From a logistics point of view it simplifies things immensely (we just need to manage stocks in another warehouse). Coding this should, however, be interesting :)
- cm2012 13y ago
  I would love to chat with you (email in profile). We have 20,000 products in FBA right now and I've been selling on Amazon for years with separate companies. The only issue is that you can't ship international multichannel yet, even if you get your products approved for Global Export.
- bpicolo 13y ago
  The odd thing I see with fulfilled by Amazon is that nothing is necessarily stopping them from buying the goods themselves and selling them in the long run if they see fit.
msy 13y ago
Amazon logistics in the UK at least seems to be a cover for using a variety of no-name low-cost couriers, which for me at least has resulted in most deliveries now involving at least one fake 'delivery attempt' and needless runaround. I'm starting to buy things elsewhere as a result, it's not worth the hassle.
- nicholassmith 13y ago
  I'll purposefully try and pick an option that results in a DHL delivery to avoid the risk of Yodel/Hermes instead, as they're just awful.

mmahemoff 13y ago

Makes sense Amazon would start a logistics service for other businesses to use. And maybe storage too. AWS and MechTurk both came from Amazon realising it could commoditise and spin off what it was using internally as separate products. A kind of reverse dogfooding.

hershel 13y ago

My guess is 3rd party logistics. If you follow amazon, you see 3pl logistics's share of the company revenue growing. And they ordered a place at 2015 in an important supply chain convention. They will probably be announcing some sort of global supply chain and fulfillment service. And the building blocks look interesting: robots, amazon level customer service and fulfillment, better supplier financing(enabled by sales data), global handling services(customs ,etc), offering better IT tools(for example demand prediction, A/B testing globally), Advertising deals on the amazon platform, etc. Almost like telling the manufacturer: you just build stuff, we'll do the rest for you. If this guess is true, seeing all this packaged would be very interesting.