Posted on 08/16/2013 6:51:43 AM PDT by Hojczyk
Last week a research analyst put the pieces together and came to the conclusion that Amazon.com is going to expand AmazonFresh into New York City. That means Amazon.com will be taking orders and providing same-day delivery to the nation's largest market. That may not mean much yet, but it suggests that the way eight million people buy groceries is about to change forever.
The vision goes well beyond just groceries. Groceries are a Trojan Horse. The dirty secret of Amazon is that it really doesn't distinguish between a head of lettuce and a big screen TV. If Amazon can pull off same-day grocery delivery in NYC, it ostensibly means consumers can order anything online and receive it the same day. By logical extension, that means Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, is on the cusp of rendering every retailer on earth obsolete.
"They're incredible, and they're doing it exactly the way Sam Walton built Walmart," says Howard Davidowitz of Davidowitz & Associates, in the attached video. "He built it by building infrastructure."
Walton knew that winning over the long term meant controlling the timing of the shopping experience. While other retailers in the '50s and '60s relied on outside distributors, Walton built his own warehouses from which he would service Walmart (WMT) stores in the surrounding areas. That gave Walton a leg up on both cost and efficiency. While other retailers were waiting for goods, Walmart was sending out their own trucks. That may not sound like a big deal, but it's the foundation of the world's largest private employer. Walmart wins by being better, faster and cheaper than the competition.
"I believe what Bezos believes," says Davidowitz. "He's going to be the only one who can really do same-day delivery everywhere."
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
same-day delivery everywhere.??????
That’s not really a secret.
Sure. It doesn’t mean that everything will be shipped from the same location.
In time, I think Amazon will probably have warehouses strategically located throughout everywhere it can ship to. It will just take time to get to that point.
> Amazon will probably have warehouses strategically located
They already do
I understand that.
However, to be able to ensure food can be delivered in the same day, those warehouses are going to have to be closer to their delivery points.
That would be so great! Amazon already saves time and money. I love this idea!
They already have regional distribution centers as well as thousands of participating retailers (mom and pop brick and mortar concerns) that ship products from all over.
If I need something, I’ll try Amazon first. Never had a problem with them and usually no taxes and prompt service. A great deal of my stuff I order comes from “mom and pop, brick and mortar” places all over the country. It is a strong counter to the people that advocate collecting taxes on Amazon because home start “bricks and mortars” are unfairly penalized because of taxation within state.
The truth is that if I can get it from Amazon in two days versus taking half day down to Atlanta to get it, I’ll take Amazon all day long over Atlanta, even if/when Amazon has to charge state taxes here in Georgia.
But the chain supermarkets blew the opportunity.
So, you’re willing to have your milk or eggs or bread sit in a truck for two days?
Yeah...smart off...you know what I was talking about.
They already do, then they sit in the super market for another day or two.
How could it be secret if they are selling everything?
Wouldn’t the best thing to do is for other companies to be more like them?
The reason: They DO already have the basic infrastructure in place to make it work.
Amazon would simply need to partner up with an existing food distributor.
No. You said it in a way that seemed to indicate that you believed Amazon’s existing infrastructure might have been sufficient to deliver food. I disagreed and said that they’d probably have to strategize their warehouses so they could deliver within a day, if that’s what they were intending to do. That implies more warehouses that will be closer to population centres than they currently might be.
BS....Amazon is primarily a durable goods retailer. You were just being smart assed with the perishables thing.
I would order my corn on the cob from them. I HATE how everyone always peels away the green to inspect the corn underneath at the grocery stores.
I’m with you on this one. Why would I stand around in a brick and mortar store, with little to no crappy sales clerks, what I want is not on the shelf and really crappy musak playing in the background, when i can shop from the comfort of my home, browse what is available on a website and have it shipped to my door. There are probably 17 women in America who belong to the I really dislike shopping club...I’m the president.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. Food distributors deliver bulk to retailers, not to your house. This is going to be very difficult to pull off logistically while keeping delivery costs to a level where they are economically competitive to someone driving a mile and picking up their groceries from Food Lion.
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