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Amazon's Quick Delivery

Great companies are always innovating. That's why it's so thrilling to be a direct shareholder of these enterprises. I'm sure that you have seen the recent stories about Amazon becoming a giant in the shipping and delivery business.

According to this story that I read at the end of June, less than a decade after Amazon started handling some of its own logistics, it has become its own biggest shipper. Amazon is about 40% of all e-commerce in the US, and it now carries just over half of its sold items. That's a big change from two years ago when the US Postal Service delivered more than 60% of Amazon parcels, and Amazon just around 15%.



It takes Amazon an average of 3.2 days to deliver a parcel, but for all other e-commerce companies, the average time is 6 days.

We had this experience last week, when we decided that we needed to buy a Dyson air heater, just to take the edge off the afternoon chill in our new office. According to the Dyson website, some South African retailers stock them, but not the latest models. It was really not easy to find out who actually had stock of anything (Michael tried, and he is good at shopping, both online and offline).

So I just ordered it on Amazon, paid in one-click and it arrived in three days. According to the paperwork, it was shipped from a warehouse in Hebron, Kentucky, and flown to South Africa by UPS, who cleared it through customs and brought it here to our door.

More on the broader Amazon story here, by Erica Pandey on Axios: Amazon, the new king of shipping.


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