Amazon opens freight network to businesses

Amazon opened its logistics network to outside businesses on May 4, turning the freight, warehousing, fulfillment and parcel-delivery system it built for its own retail operation into a standalone enterprise product. The service, called Amazon Supply Chain Services, or ASCS, is aimed not just at merchants that sell on Amazon’s marketplace, but at manufacturers, retailers and other companies that want to use pieces of Amazon’s network across multiple sales channels. Amazon said early users include Procter & Gamble, 3M, Lands’ End and American Eagle Outfitters. Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services, said the company is offering “the infrastructure, intelligence, and scale” of a network it built over decades to businesses beyond Amazon’s store. ### What exactly did Amazon open to outside companies? Amazon said ASCS includes freight, distribution, fulfillment and parcel shipping, which means businesses can use Amazon for inbound transportation, storage, inventory movement and final delivery. The company described the offer as covering goods from raw materials to finished products, using the same network that supports Amazon.com and its independent sellers. (press.aboutamazon.com) Amazon’s seller-facing materials say companies can buy individual services or use an end-to-end option called Amazon Managed Service. Amazon says that setup can pick up inventory at manufacturing sites, handle cross-border shipping and customs clearance, store goods in bulk, replenish inventory and deliver directly to customers. ### Which companies are already using it, and for what? Procter & Gamble is using Amazon’s freight services to move raw materials to production facilities and to move finished goods through its distribution network, Amazon said. 3M is using Amazon freight to move products from manufacturing sites to distribution centers worldwide. (press.aboutamazon.com) Lands’ End is using what Amazon called a unified inventory pool inside Amazon’s network to fulfill orders across multiple sales channels. (sell.amazon.com) American Eagle Outfitters is using Amazon’s parcel-delivery network to ship online orders from the American Eagle and Aerie websites directly to customers across the United States, according to Amazon’s launch announcement. (press.aboutamazon.com) ### How far beyond Amazon’s own marketplace does this go? Amazon said the service is available to businesses “of all types and sizes,” including companies that do not sell on Amazon. Its seller site says companies that only want to sell on non-Amazon channels can open a dedicated ASCS account, while existing Amazon sellers can access the tools through Seller Central. Over the past three years, Amazon said, hundreds of thousands of Amazon sellers have already used its logistics network to move, store and deliver hundreds of millions of packages across third-party facilities, warehouses and sales channels beyond the Amazon store. (press.aboutamazon.com) The ASCS launch extends that model into a broader third-party logistics offering for sectors including healthcare, automotive, manufacturing and retail, according to Amazon. (aboutamazon.com) ### What does Amazon say makes the service different? Peter Larsen said Amazon’s supply-chain operation was built first to support Amazon’s own retail business, not as a separate outside service. In Amazon’s description, that network now includes global freight, domestic transportation, fulfillment centers and parcel delivery operating every day of the week. Amazon’s supply-chain blog said the company began building more of the network in-house after a Christmas Eve shipping breakdown and has spent more than a decade expanding it. (press.aboutamazon.com) The company said that network now includes more than 100,000 owned trailers, intermodal containers and aircraft. ### How does Amazon position the launch? Amazon compared the move to the way it turned internal cloud-computing infrastructure into Amazon Web Services. (aboutamazon.com) Larsen made that comparison directly in the company’s launch statement, saying Amazon is bringing its supply-chain capabilities to outside businesses “much like Amazon Web Services did for cloud computing.” (supplychain.amazon.com) The company’s public materials frame ASCS as a multi-channel logistics product rather than a marketplace-only tool. Amazon’s site says businesses can track transportation, storage, distribution, fulfillment and delivery across multiple sales channels in one place. May 4 is the formal launch date Amazon gave for ASCS, and the company’s supply-chain site says businesses can sign up now either through Seller Central or through a standalone ASCS account for non-Amazon channels. (press.aboutamazon.com) Amazon has also published case-study and product pages under its supply-chain site as the next public step in the rollout. (aboutamazon.com) (sell.amazon.com)