Amazon orders keep getting faster.
The e-commerce juggernaut said Monday that it is making a big push into ultrafast fulfillment with new 30-minute delivery tests in Seattle and Philadelphia.
Through the new service, dubbed Amazon Now, customers can choose from thousands of essentials, such as diapers, milk, pet food, electronics, and more, delivered right to their doorstep in under half an hour.
In the Seattle test, Amazon workers pick and bag items at its warehouse, which are then handed off to Amazon Flex drivers who are expected to collect orders and get going within two minutes, tech news site GeekWire reported last week, citing Amazon’s permit application filings in Seattle.
While Amazon is the biggest player in e-commerce in terms of sheer volume, the company is still catching up with retail giant Walmart in terms of speed.
Powered by its fleet of more than 4,600 stores in the US, Walmart is within a three-hour delivery reach of roughly 95% of American households.
The company also said more than a third of shoppers pay an additional fee to have their orders delivered in less than an hour, and it routinely fulfills orders in a matter of minutes.
For example, Walmart said its fastest delivery on Black Friday was a Shark Steam & Scrub Mop to a shopper in Utah.
Of course, Amazon hasn’t been sitting still.
In June, the company began adding 4,000 “smaller” communities to its same-day fulfillment service by stocking more everyday essentials at strategically located delivery stations around the US.
As for the question of whether US retailers will start promising 15-minute delivery (or even shorter), supply chain consultant Ralph Asher previously told Business Insider the laws of physics and finance could prove to be real constraints.
For example, Asher modeled a 30-minute delivery concept for Minneapolis and found that four fulfillment stations were needed to serve the metro area. Getting fulfillment down to 15 minutes required a whopping 31 centers, each of which would have to be stocked with sufficient inventory to meet demand.
“You need more and more expensive equipment to do it, you need more and more inventory, you need more and more real estate, you need more and more drivers willing to drop everything at a moment’s notice to do delivery,” he said.
“There’s just probably not as much of a market for anything under 30 minutes,” he added.
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