Where did you shop this holiday season? I bet you at least bought something on Amazon.  My daughter is considering buying all her school books on Amazon rather than from the school bookstore at college that will pack it up for her pick up.  Why would she even consider giving up that service? Because Amazon has some of the best prices for stuff.  Amazon was originally known as an online book store but has become so much more.  Amazon has 225 Million customers around the world.  It’s goal is to  sell  everything to everyone. Really

This year they launched Sunday delivery.  I love this company for many reasons.  I love that they deliver what you want and that the company has good books in that they do not show a filthy profit in the stock market.  They put their profits right back into the company to make it run better for its   customers.  What happens after you click and place an order on Amazon?  It is the closest thing to Santa’s Workshop here on earth.  The company has warehouses of stuff called distribution centers where they pack up and ship products. Each center can be the size of 20 football fields and that is just the place to house the stuff that you and your closest neighborhoods would order. There are 96 of these centers worldwide.  Amazon also calls them Fulfillment Centers.

More than 300 items per second are ordered on Amazon.  The founder and owner of Amazon,  Jeff  Bezos is said to be worth at least $25 Billion dollars.  Does he earn it? Sure.  His secret to success is in trying to get to you whatever you want now when you want it.  He gets pretty close to now delivery and is looking to the future when he will be able to literally have your box of stuff drop down from the sky through the use of drones in order to get as close to now devilry as he can. They already have the world’s largest collection of stuff on earth available for purchase.

 

My Masters of Business Administration degree has taught me to analyze company operations for success. I love this company because I agree with how it operates.  As soon as merchandise arrives at the warehouse it is scanned with a identifying number that holds an extensive file on the product.  Then I love the efficiency at which items are stored.  In a business, available space for products is everything.  A stack of books can be stored next to boxes of coffeemakers simply because they both take up a similar amount of space on the shelves.  It is all about space and size not subject.  Amazon is so efficient with its stacking that now  they can store twice as many goods in the warehouses.

The motto is “Anything you want on earth you are going to get from us.”  Now they have to live up to their tough talk.  We all know what happened to the poor pizza delivery guys who said they can deliver within an exact time frame. They got in a lot of car accidents. In the warehouse outgoing boxed mail is already sorted by postal codes to make the process faster to your door. Amazon uses more trucks than planes because their warehouses are located where they have lots of customers.   In two cities Amazon has started delivering groceries.  They call it   Amazon  Fresh.  Their goal is to be able to deliver anything you want on the same day.

Amazon has traveled far from its original goal as an online bookseller. Now it is even selling Amazon Fashion which features online clothing.  The most valuable asset of Amazon is its well working computer system called The Cloud.  It keeps people, products, locations, ordering and shipping all in smooth working order with few errors.  This system is valuable as a selling asset to  government agencies and other companies willing to pay for a good system or plan of operations.  In any business you are only as good as your customer service.

Should we care that a once online bookstore is now organizing and collecting data for The CIA?  That is supposed to be our government’s main spy agency?  OK so they created a private cloud for the government.  But this company even is dictating how we should be reading. They introduced the Kindle e-reader. Why? Reading a book the way we used to for centuries wasn’t good enough for them? NO!  They sell the devices at cost but hope to make a profit on all the things you buy to read in the thing. Customer loyalty is the most important thing to Amazon.   They won the battle. People don’t even shop around, they just order stuff on Amazon.