【商业周刊 20160831】亚马逊能干掉联邦快递吗？
【中文标题】亚马逊能干掉联邦快递吗？
【原文标题】Will Amazon Kill FedEx?
【登载媒体】商业周刊
【原文作者】Devin Leonard
【原文链接】https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-amazon-delivery/
亚马逊在西雅图海洋节上展示第一架货运飞机“一流空运”（Prime Air）。
去年秋天，约翰•斯坦福斯正在竞选俄亥俄州威明顿市长期间，他听到一些传言。一家大公司在威明顿机场在测试一架货运飞机，而且测试方相当低调。经常前往机场的人说，这家公司用黑色塑料袋包住他们的包裹，防止泄露信息，他们管这件事叫做“阿米莉亚项目”。他不知道这是哪家公司，但有人在私下说是亚马逊。
71岁的斯坦福斯做仓储生意，他长得有点像杰弗里•塔伯。他在11月轻松赢得了市长选举，但他从未过多问起机场发生的事情。他不想因为太爱管闲事而影响别人的生意，他当初的想法就是“给我搞定就业岗位就好”。
威明顿位于代顿市东南大约35英里处，代顿有1.2万居民，曾经有大量的就业机会。那个机场曾经是安邦快递的集散地，2003年德国快递公司DHL收购了安邦。数千人在这机场工作，负责分拣包裹，将他们装上出港的飞机。这算不上是一份值得骄傲的工作，但薪水还不错，操作员可以到威明顿大街上的商店里去消费，到理发店整理头发，甚至去做纹身。当地的书店生意也不错，尤其是在哈里•波特系列出版的时候。斯坦福斯略带忧愁地说：“他们关闭了整条大街的生意。”他还说到2007年书店举办了哈利•波特第七部的上市联欢会，“到处都是人，我们的扶轮社光卖刨冰就挣了1000美元，一千美元啊。”
2008年，DHL关闭了威明顿的操作场地，机场的几乎所有工作人员都失业了。斯坦福斯说：“这是毁灭性的打击，一个小城市失去支柱性产业之后的损失太大了。”第二年，《60分钟》节目播出了这里就业形势的一个小片段，作为美国经济衰退的象征。通讯员斯科特•佩利说：“当奥巴马在就职典礼上说‘艰苦的寒冬’时，再也没有人比俄亥俄州威明顿的居民有更深刻的体会了。”
从2015年9月开始，这里的居民看到又有飞机在机场起降，装卸的货物都是用黑塑料袋包裹的箱子。今年3月，亚马逊宣布向航空运输服务集团租金20架波音767飞机，还在协商购买这家公司将近20％的股份。亚马逊全球操作高级副总裁戴夫•克拉克说：“我们很高兴用新的供应商航空运输服务集团来补充现有的派送网络。用20架货机来满足次日达和隔日的服务承诺。”亚马逊否认用黑色塑料袋包裹他们的货物。
在亚马逊宣布这个消息两个星期之后，我在斯坦福斯市政厅的办公室外遇到了他。和他在一起的是他的秘书玛丽亚•米勒和克林顿县经济发展部主任布雷德•迪克森。亚马逊尚未公布有关这个机场操作的计划细节，但是斯坦福斯希望尽快能有一些就业机会。
市长穿着一件蓝色的羊毛外套，他承认自己的听力有点问题，所以让年轻的秘书与我们沟通。米勒说：“我们还不知道可以做些什么，但是我们在殷切地期待。我们这里有的是喜欢把箱子搬来搬去的人。”
很难判断米勒和迪克森两人谁更支持亚马逊。迪克森说：“他们将改变电子商务的未来。”
米勒说：“这是一家令人感觉愉快的公司，谁不愿意与这样的公司合作呢？看看他们对待客户和员工的方式。”
话题转到了哈利•波特的活动上。斯坦福斯忍不住开口：“我们本地有一家书店，非常积极地举办这类活动。可惜的是，书店关门了。知道是谁让它关门的吗？”
米勒看了他一眼：“别说。”
“现在还有谁去书店买书？”斯坦福斯笑着说。
“别说了。”米勒再次警告。
“亚马逊。”斯坦福斯说。
“我就知道你要说出来。”迪克森摇着头说。
西雅图“Prime Now”集散地展示的公司口号。
俄亥俄的消息宣布两个月之后，亚马逊向一家位于纽约帕切斯的货运航空公司亚特拉斯租赁了20架喷气机，它还购买了4000台卡车。同时，亚马逊在中国的一家子公司获得了货运资质证书，分析人士认为这让它可以出售亚洲与美国和欧洲之间的空余舱位。简而言之，亚马逊正在变成一个电子商务的沃尔玛，再加上联邦快递。
对于其它企业而言，这种扩张模式似乎是荒唐的，但是亚马逊的增长本身就是一个荒唐的过程。2010年，它的年收入为340亿美元，去年达到了1070亿美元。2010年，公司拥有33,700名员工，到今年6月份，员工数量达到268,900。为了满足不断扩大的总部办公需求，亚马逊占领了西雅图整个南湖街区，在城市里建造了三个具有良好生态环境的建筑群，让它的员工可以更好地思考，就好像一大群拉尔夫•沃尔多•爱默生在慢慢踱步。这家公司目前在世界最有价值公司的排行中名列第5位，它的市值为3660亿美元，差不多相当于沃尔玛、联邦快递和波音公司的总和。
多年来，亚马逊首席执行官杰夫•贝佐斯不理会华尔街的警告，投资数十亿美元到电子书、机器人仓库、智能手机、平板电脑和电视节目中，因此损失了大笔的利润。但是在7月份，公司发布的季度报告显示连续5个月的利润增长。仅仅它的云计算服务平台Amazon Web Services，在去年就取得了79亿美元的销售业绩。贝佐斯在亚马逊最近一次的年度报告中写到：“我们差点陷入困境，但很高兴我们没有，对吗？”
亚马逊的野心来源于其Prime服务的成功。亚马逊的Prime客户每年只需要缴纳99美元，就可以免费享受商品两天内送达的服务。注册用户在网站的消费量大致是非注册用户的三倍。亚马逊对公司的数据严格保密，但是消费者情报研究合作所估计截止到6月底，亚马逊有6300万Prime客户，比去年增长了1900万。为了把注册用户笼络在身边，亚马逊毫不吝惜地抛出额外的福利，比如免费观看亚马逊视频、Kindle电子书用户的借阅图书馆、限期阅读《华盛顿邮报》，这是贝佐斯这个十亿万富翁在三年前用2.5亿美元现金买下来的。更重要的是，Prime客户所享受到的快速送达服务，现在变得越来越快了。在很多大城市，注册用户现在可以享受超过2.5种商品的两小时送达服务，这些商品在沃尔格林和7-11便利店里都有售。如果再支付7.99美元，商品一小时内就会送货道门。一些公司高管戏称这项服务是“亚马逊魔术”，它的正是名称是“Prime Now”。
以亚马逊的规模，提供近乎完美的服务代价是昂贵的。去年，公司的运输成本是115亿美元，比两年前翻了一倍。根据蒙特利尔供应链咨询公司MWPVL国际提供的信息，除了租赁飞机和购买卡车，亚马逊还建立了28个分拣中心、59个派送站，把包裹送到当地的递送员手中，还有超过65个Prime Now集散储存着最畅销的商品，可以在第一时间送到全世界的客户手中。派捷投资银行的互联网产业分析师吉恩•曼斯特说：“今年我们预计亚马逊会卖出72亿个商品。4年之后的2020年，我们预计销量会达到126亿。”
6月，德国银行发布了一份报告，预测亚马逊的全球物流实力将可以让商品直接从中国的工厂发往美国和欧洲的客户，不仅仅使用波音767飞机和海运集装箱，还包括自动驾驶汽车和无人机。报告说亚马逊持有“预期包裹运输”专利，以名度实：当某些Prime客户经常购买除味剂，亚马逊就会准备好一些除味剂商品，打包完成，等待贴标签出运。德国银行写到，“这是一项伟大的数学成就”，亚马逊的“数百名数学博士”专门研究优化物流方案。
还有一些人相信亚马逊将会凭借其运输网络盈利，就像Amazon Web Services一样，从而挑战世界顶尖运输公司的地位。亚马逊前高管、目前在一家重组公司奥迈企业顾问公司任职的约翰•罗斯曼说：“我充分期待亚马逊可以建立一个可以被其它公司利用的供应链网络。未来五年？不一定。未来十到十五年？没问题。”
在编辑这篇文章的过程中，亚马逊基本上没有帮上忙。我在西雅图与负责物流的克拉克有过一次友好的谈话，但仅持续了12分钟。亚马逊说贝佐斯不在办公室。
在6月份Recode公司在加利福尼亚州派洛斯福德举办的第三次年度会议上，贝佐斯简要谈及了他的派送计划。他坐在Recode联合创始人沃尔特•莫斯博格旁边的一张红色皮椅上，这个人就像他的一个好脾气的审讯者。贝佐斯提到了所有相关的事情，从他的太空探索计划蓝色起源公司，到《华盛顿邮报》，到即将在芝加哥、西雅图和波特兰开业的亚马逊实体书店。莫斯博格没有提到的是贝佐斯最近在《星际迷航：超越》中客串一个外星人，一个坑坑洼洼的大脑袋，让他看起来就像一个大核桃。但是在莫斯博格开始提问之前，他先提到了在附近街区看到的带有亚马逊标志的白色卡车。
“有时候，我彻底服了。我在星期六7点钟订购的包裹，在周日就送到了。”莫斯博格说。
和许多人一样，他想搞清楚究竟发生了什么。“你打算自己来做最后一公里配送吗？”莫斯博格问。
贝佐斯摇摇头。他说亚马逊的配送网络是辅助——并不是替代——联邦快递、UPS和没有邮政的服务网络。“我们并不想取而代之。”他说。
“你不打算把联邦快递挤出市场？”莫斯博格试探道。
“不。”贝佐斯说。
“得到更好的价格？”
“不，实际上我们想要……”贝佐斯停了一下，笑了笑，“我们当然想要更好的价格，尽管丢过来吧。”观众们也笑了，贝佐斯继续说：“我们会充分利用美国邮政和UPS给我们提供的操作能力，但我们也有自己的补充。所以我们并不是在竞争我们与UPS和没有邮政一起成长。”
自从1994年成立亚马逊以来，贝佐斯一直致力于配送网络的建设。毕竟，如果他不能把商品尽快送到客户手中，人们就会到实体店购物。亚马逊前高管罗斯曼说，贝佐斯和他的团队把配送看作是试图进入电子商务领域的竞争对手的重要门槛——尤其是谷歌和脸书。“他们一直认为，谷歌和脸书的最大劣势是他们不懂物流。”罗斯曼说。
亚马逊在西雅图为它的第一架一流空运波音767飞机揭幕。
1999年，亚马逊为Kozmo.com投资6000万美元。这是一家新兴公司，身着橙色服装的递送员在纽约、旧金山和其它几个城市提供杂货一小时配送服务。Kozmo在2001年倒闭，遭遇同样命运的还有一大批第一代互联网公司。它和失败的互联网超市Webvan一起，被奚落为当年最不明智的举动。
亚马逊因此获得了宝贵的经验。当它进入中国和印度等发展中国家时，它使用非机动车提供类似Kozmo的派送服务。亚马逊还聘请了Webvan前高管，在2007年启动了杂货派送服务AmazonFresh。但是真正让这家公司开始建立大型递送网络的，是Prime服务。
根据荷兰银行提供的信息，Prime服务在2005年推出之后，5年时间里吸引了800万用户。为了达成两日免费送达的服务承诺，亚马逊不得不把大量的商品交给收费昂贵的联邦快递和UPS。2011年，一位公司前高管说，公司发现在节假日期间，他们的货物几乎压垮了联邦快递和UPS，“我们几乎让他们完全瘫痪了。”于是，亚马逊决定寻找另外的途径。
公司首先在英国试水。贝佐斯在2013年股东年度报告中说：“我们在英国建立了自己的最后一公里快速递送网络，商业航班无法满足我们货量高峰期时的运输需求。后续还有更多的信息。”皇家邮政在同年上市，这个时机再糟糕不过了。他们预计信件量会减少，但是包裹数量的增加可以填补差距。当亚马逊开始自己递送包裹时，皇家邮政在英国的总货量持平。杰弗里国际集团欧洲运输业分析专家大卫•科斯坦斯说：“由于亚马逊，皇家邮政的货量增长彻底没有了。”皇家邮政怀疑贝佐斯的真正实力，说他无法处理亚马逊所有的包裹，除此之外没有进一步的评论。
在美国本土，亚马逊可以奉承没有邮政，试图减少对UPS和联邦快递的依赖。2013年11月，美国邮政宣布它将在周日派送亚马逊的包裹。亚马逊还建立了一套分拣系统，可以根据邮政编码把货物迅速分拣到地方邮局，以便进行住宅地址的派送。
然而这一切都无法避免2013年的“大灾难”。那一年的11月，我恰好在路易斯维尔的UPS全球操作中心，准备一篇有关一位高管斯科特•阿贝尔的文章。阿贝尔在公司里被称作“高峰先生”，因为他一整年都在为圣诞节货量高峰期做准备。阿贝尔很热情，但我们在公司的小会议室交谈时，他显然心不在焉。他说，让他心烦意乱的是有一位大客户，突然决定在圣诞节前一个周末大幅增加出货量。
由于货量急剧增长，他刚刚用了5天时间筹备好一个计划，准备更多的飞机，为路易斯维尔庞大的全球分拣中心增加更多的人手、安排双班制。阿贝尔不愿透露这个令人恼火的客户名称，但是后来，操作中心工会主席杰伊•丹尼斯告诉我就是亚马逊。尽管如此，到了12月，UPS的仓库里堆满了亚马逊的包裹，它努力挣扎着满足亚马逊的派送时限。联邦快递的情况也是如此。亚马逊毫不掩饰它的不满情绪，一位发言人说：“亚马逊仓储中心把节日期间派送的计划按时提交给物流供应商。”
西北大学供应链管理教授罗伯特•列伯说：“人们因此而责怪UPS，但实际情况是亚马逊在12月23日丢给UPS的货量远远高过早先的预计。我是说，你不可能在圣诞节前一天出去租一架飞机，也不可能临时安排加班。”亚马逊和UPS都不愿再谈论这件事，但是一位UPS的发言人史蒂夫•高特说，公司已经开发出一个系统，让客户的节日货量信息更加清晰可见。
不管怎样，亚马逊加倍努力避免再一次的节日大灾难。到2014年底，它在美国建立了23个分拣中心。前亚马逊房地产高管本•康威尔参与了这个基础设施建设狂欢：“简直是一场闪电战，建立分拣中心的速度不能再快了。”同年，亚马逊在纽约推出了Prime Now服务，递送员驾驶汽车、骑自行车、乘坐公共交通工具去派送。供应链咨询公司MWPVL创始人马克•伍尔夫拉特说：“亚马逊的人在纽约乘坐地铁，手推车里堆满了货物。他们使用学生、临时工和所有那些想挣点钱的人。”亚马逊的Prime Now服务已经扩展到40个城市，货量最高的商品是瓶装水和厕纸，但公司最近说他们在Prime Now服务推出后递送了30万个避孕套。所以下一次当你发现床头柜的抽屉里空了时，可以尝试打电话给联邦快递。
去年9月，亚马逊推出了一个按需提供派送的服务，叫做亚马逊Flex。人们可以登录一个app，说他们现在有空，就可以帮忙收取和派送Prime Now包裹，就像Uber驾驶员送客人一样。当Prime Now的货量突然暴增时，Flex可以提供灵活的派送服务，比如当东海岸出现暴风雪，曼哈顿居民需要大量的罐装食品时。7月31日凌晨，Felx用户为Prime Now客户提供了大量的《哈里波特与诅咒之子》派送服务。
当然，这些努力也存在着负面的作用。无论亚马逊然他的包裹大河流向哪里，都有可能引起当地居民的反对。汉堡市政府官员说，在当地居民、政客和警方的反对下 ，亚马逊撤回了在一个养老院和幼儿园旁边建立分拨中心的计划。当地一位绿党领袖迈克尔•奥森博格说：“亚马逊觉得没有必要征求我们的意见，即使当地的媒体已经把这个事情挑明。”6月，巴黎市长安妮•伊达尔戈抗议Prime Now服务进入她的领地，她说这个服务将会破坏空气、阻碍交通、损害当地的经济。伊达尔戈说：“这项服务将会严重破坏巴黎的商业平衡，这家美国大公司根本没有提前通知巴黎，直到服务开始的前几天。”
UPS和联邦快递对于亚马逊威胁到他们的生意这个问题表示不屑一顾，至少是在公开场合。在2月份的一个电话会议上，UPS首席执行官大卫•艾博尼摆出一副官方论调：“亚马逊是我们的优质客户，我们有很好的互惠关系。”在3月份的一次投资者会议上，联邦快递首席执行官弗雷德•史密斯嘲弄亚马逊挑战联邦快递的想法，说这是“捕风捉影”。西北大学教授列伯在过去23年里访问过很多物流行业的高管，他说他们在私下里并没那么自信。列伯说：“当亚马逊说要做当日达时，人们说：‘随便吧，我们反正不需要这个服务。’”但是当亚马逊开始租赁飞机，他们都慌了。“亚马逊的市场战略基本上就是‘我们进入这个市场，用低价搞死你。’如果亚马逊延续这个策略，他们必将快速撼动这个产业。”
恐惧气氛也扩散到华尔街，分析人士认为投资者会担心亚马逊给运输行业造成的影响。桑福德伯恩斯坦专门跟进运输市场的分析师戴维•弗农说：“观察者普遍的情绪是害怕亚马逊，亚马逊基本上是一个经典的零和游戏玩家。”
“请不要使用社交媒体，”亚马逊一位公关人士说，他留着光头，看起来有点像贝佐斯，“我知道这很吸引人，但要尊重禁令。”
这是西雅图一个晴朗的星期二早晨。亚马逊带领十多位记者登上一辆白色大巴，到城市南部的波音机库去参观它的第一架Prime服务飞机。一架波音767飞机贴上了Prime Air的标志，白色的机身点缀着浅蓝色的图案。媒体部的人特意指出，机尾上有亚马逊的标志性弧线——“亚马逊微笑”。第二天，这架飞机——亚马逊一号——将会在海洋节上首次亮相，在蓝色天使飞行队表演之前飞跃西雅图上空。
亚马逊全球操作副总裁克拉克走上讲台，旁边堆放了一些亚马逊的箱子。他穿着格子呢上衣、蓝色衬衫、靴型牛仔裤，稍显大腹便便。克拉克看起来不像一个让整个产业心怀恐惧的公司高管，更像是一个高中乐队的教练。他在17年前在田纳西大学供应链管理MBA毕业并加入亚马逊之前，的确做过这样的事情。他说：“这真是梦幻般的一天。我必须承认，我很难保持清醒，这是我第一次见到真正的亚马逊飞机。”
接下来的半个小时，克拉克与记者友好地讲述他所谓的“美丽的飞机”。他小心翼翼地提到了跨洋运输许可证，但他明确地说亚马逊得到了许可，正在研究如何使用。“我们的中国团队非常有创造性。”
怎么看待巴黎市长不喜欢亚马逊员工抱着厕纸和避孕套满街跑的问题？克拉克笑了笑说：“我们的团队正在紧密合作确保所有人都能高兴。”
克拉克的发言结束了，他必须要去为明天海洋节准备另一个“梦幻般”的演讲。他说：“我有两个儿子，至少在这个周末，我会是一个非常非常优秀的爸爸。”
原文：
The first public flight of Amazon’s Prime Air plane, over the Seafair festival in Seattle.
Last fall, when he was running for mayor of Wilmington, Ohio, John Stanforth heard a rumor. A big company was testing an airfreight operation at the local airport, Wilmington Air Park. Whoever it was wanted to keep the project quiet. People who frequented the airport said the company was wrapping its packages in black plastic to obscure any lettering and referred to its experiment as Project Amelia. He wasn’t sure which company it was, though some people were whispering it was Amazon.com.
Stanforth, 71, owns a storage business and looks a bit like the actor Jeffrey Tambor. In November he easily won the mayoral election. But even then he didn’t ask too many questions about what was going on at the airport. He didn’t want to jeopardize anything by being too nosy. “Guys, just bring me the jobs,” he recalls thinking.
Wilmington is about 35 miles southeast of Dayton and has a population of about 12,000. Jobs used to be plentiful. The air park was a hub for Airborne Express and then DHL, the German shipping company, which bought Airborne Express in 2003. Thousands of people toiled at the airport, sorting packages that arrived and loading them onto outbound planes. It wasn’t the most spiritually rewarding work, but it paid well, enabling package handlers to patronize the shops on Wilmington’s Main Street, to get haircuts in the barbershop and body illustrations at the tattoo parlor. Even the local bookstore did great business, especially when Harry Potter novels came out. “They shut down the main street,” Stanforth says wistfully, about the release party the store threw in 2007 for the seventh book in the Potter series. “There were people everywhere. Our Rotary Club made $1,000 selling shaved ice. A thousand bucks!”
In 2008, DHL shuttered its Wilmington operation, and almost everybody at the air park lost their jobs. “It was devastating,” Stanforth says. “You can’t lose that kind of an industry in a small community and not be hurt.” The following year, the city was featured on a 60 Minutes segment as a symbol of recessionary America. “When President Obama spoke of ‘the winter of our hardship’ in his inaugural address, no one in America understood that better than the folks we met in Wilmington, Ohio,” correspondent Scott Pelley said.
Starting in September 2015, people in the city noticed more planes flying in and out of the airport, loading and unloading those black-wrapped boxes. This March, Amazon announced that it was leasing 20 Boeing 767s from Air Transport Services Group, a cargo company that operates out of the air park. Amazon had also negotiated an option to buy nearly 20 percent of the company. “We’re excited to supplement our existing delivery network with a great new provider, ATSG, by adding 20 planes to ensure air cargo capacity to support one- and two-day delivery,” Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president for worldwide operations, said in a statement at the time. Amazon denies wrapping its boxes in black during the trial period.
Two weeks after Amazon’s announcement, I meet with Stanforth in a conference room outside his office at the municipal building. He’s joined by Marian Miller, his lively executive assistant, and Bret Dixon, Clinton County’s economic development director. Amazon still hasn’t said much about its plans for the air park, but Stanforth is hopeful there will be some jobs soon.
The mayor, who wears a green fleece jacket and confesses to being a little hard of hearing, lets his younger colleagues do most of the talking. “We don’t know what it’s going to do yet,” Miller says, “but we’re crossing our fingers. We have people that like slinging packages.”
It’s hard to tell who’s more pro-Amazon, Miller or Dixon. “They’re changing the face of e-commerce,” Dixon says.
“They are a feel-good company,” says Miller. “Who wouldn’t want a feel-good company like Amazon? Look at the way they treat their customers and their employees!”
The conversation turns to those Harry Potter events. Stanforth perks up. “Well, we had a local bookstore that really promoted it and took the initiative,” he says. “Sad to say, it’s closed up. Wonder who closed them up?”
Miller gives him a look. “Don’t say it.”
“Where does everybody get their books now?” Stanforth says, grinning.
“Don’t say that,” Miller warns him again.
“Amazon,” Stanforth says.
“I knew you were going to say it,” Dixon says, shaking his head.
One of many corporate mantras on display for workers at a Seattle Prime Now hub.
Two months after the Ohio announcement, Amazon leased 20 more jets from Atlas Air, an air cargo company based in Purchase, N.Y. Amazon has also purchased 4,000 truck trailers. Meanwhile, a company subsidiary in China has obtained a freight-forwarding license that analysts say enables it to sell space on container ships traveling between Asia and the U.S. and Europe. In short, Amazon is becoming a kind of e-commerce Walmart with a FedEx attached.
With any other company, an expansion like this would be preposterous. But Amazon’s growth has been preposterous. In 2010 its annual revenue was $34 billion; last year, $107 billion. In 2010 the company employed 33,700 workers. By this June, it had 268,900. To have enough office space for its swelling headquarters staff, Amazon has swallowed Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, and it’s building three tree-filled biospheres in the city that will allow workers to take contemplative breaks, like so many Ralph Waldo Emersons in Jetsonian luxury. The company is the fifth-most valuable in the world: Its market capitalization is about $366 billion, which is roughly equal to the combined worth of Walmart, FedEx, and Boeing.
For years, Amazon lost money as Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos ignored Wall Street’s concerns and poured billions into such initiatives as e-readers, robot-enhanced warehouses, smartphones, tablets, and television shows. Yet in July, the company posted its fifth straight quarterly profit. Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing division, alone had sales of $7.9 billion last year. “We could have stuck to the knitting,” Bezos wrote in Amazon’s most recent annual report. “I’m glad we didn’t. Or did we?”
Amazon’s ambitions depend on the continued success of its Prime service. For $99 a year, Amazon Prime customers get two-day delivery at no extra charge. Those who sign up tend to spend almost three times as much as their non-Prime peers. The company zealously guards its numbers, but Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimates that Amazon had 63 million Prime members as of late June—19 million more than the year before. Amazon keeps subscribers in the fold by lavishing them with perks such as free access to Amazon Video, the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and trial subscriptions to the Washington Post, which Bezos, a billionaire many times over, purchased for $250 million in cash three years ago. But more than anything, Prime members sign up for that fast shipping, which keeps getting faster. In many large cities, subscribers can now get free two-hour delivery on more than 25,000 items they might otherwise have bought at Walgreens or 7-Eleven. For an additional $7.99, orders arrive within an hour. Some company executives joked that the service should be called Amazon Magic; they went with Prime Now.
Providing near-instant gratification on Amazon’s scale isn’t cheap. Last year the company spent $11.5 billion on shipping—nearly twice what it did two years ago. Along with leasing jets and buying trailers, Amazon has opened more than 28 sorting centers, 59 delivery stations that feed packages to local couriers, and more than 65 Prime Now hubs stocked with best-selling items that can be rushed to customers around the world, according to MWPVL International, a Montreal-based supply chain consultant. “This year we estimate Amazon is going to sell 7.2 billion items,” says Gene Munster, an internet industry analyst at Piper Jaffray. “In 2020, which is only four years away, we expect them to sell 12.6 billion items.”
In June, Deutsche Bank released a report predicting that Amazon will eventually have a global shipping operation capable of moving goods directly from factories in China to customers in the U.S. and Europe, using not just 767s and container ships, but also self-driving trucks and drones. The report also said Amazon has a patent for “anticipatory package shipping” technology, which is just what it sounds like: When some Prime subscriber buys more deodorant, Amazon already has the box standing by, ready to label and ship. “It’s just one giant math exercise,” Deutsche Bank wrote, adding that Amazon has “hundreds of Ph.D. mathematicians” who spend their days optimizing logistics.
Others believe that Amazon will make a business out of its delivery network, as it did with Amazon Web Services, thereby challenging the world’s leading shipping companies. “I fully expect Amazon to build out a logistics supply chain that others can use,” says John Rossman, a former Amazon executive who’s now a managing director at the restructuring firm Alvarez & Marsal. “Over the next five years? I doubt it. Over 10 or 15 years? Oh yeah.”
Amazon cooperated with this article, but barely. I had a friendly conversation in Seattle with Clark, the guy in charge of delivery. It lasted for 12 minutes. Amazon said Bezos wasn’t available.
Bezos did, however, briefly discuss his plans for delivery in June, onstage at Recode’s third annual Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. He took a seat in a red leather chair beside Recode co-founder Walt Mossberg, who would be his amiable inquisitor. Bezos fielded questions about everything from Blue Origin, his space exploration venture, to the Washington Post, to Amazon’s own physical bookstores, which are opening in cities such as Chicago, Seattle, and Portland, Ore. The one thing Mossberg didn’t mention was Bezos’s recent appearance in Star Trek Beyond as an alien with a long, dimpled head that looks like a giant pecan. But before Mossberg got to all that, he brought up the white trucks with Amazon’s logo that he’d been seeing around his neighborhood.
“Personally, I’m utterly astonished sometimes that this box shows up on Sunday, and I only bought it on Saturday at 7 o’clock,” Mossberg said.
Like a lot of other people, he wanted to know what was going on. “Are you aiming to take over that last mile?” Mossberg asked.
Bezos shook his head. He said Amazon was creating a delivery network that added to—and didn’t replace—those of FedEx, UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service. “It’s not that we are trying to take over,” he said.
“You’re not trying to put FedEx out of business?” Mossberg prodded him.
“No,” Bezos said.
“Or get better prices from them?”
“No, in fact what we want …” Then Bezos paused for a moment and smiled. “Well, we’d always like better prices,” he said. “Yeah, feel free.” The audience laughed, and Bezos completed his thought: “We will take all the capacity that the U.S. Postal Service can give us and that UPS can give us and we still need to supplement it. So we’re not cutting back. We’re growing our business with UPS. We’re growing our business with the U.S. Postal Service.”
Bezos has been consumed with delivery since he founded Amazon in 1994. After all, if he couldn’t get orders to people fast enough, they’d just buy stuff in stores. Rossman, the former Amazon executive, says Bezos and his team also saw delivery as a way to fend off competitors who might have wanted to get into e-commerce—in particular Google, and later Facebook. “They’ve always thought one of their best defenses against Google and Facebook was that they don’t understand logistics,” Rossman says.
Amazon unveils its first Prime Air Boeing 767 in Seattle.
In 1999, Amazon invested $60 million in Kozmo.com, a startup whose orange-suited bike messengers provided one-hour delivery of sundries in New York, San Francisco, and a few other cities. When Kozmo imploded in 2001, alongside many other companies from the first dot-com boom, it was widely ridiculed as one of the more misguided endeavors of the era, along with failed online supermarket Webvan.
Amazon learned a different lesson. When it entered developing countries such as China and India, it used bike messengers to provide Kozmo-style delivery. Amazon also hired former executives from Webvan to launch AmazonFresh, a grocery delivery service that began in 2007. But what really pushed the company into building a much larger-scale delivery operation was Prime.
Following its 2005 introduction, Prime attracted around 8 million members in five years, according to Deutsche Bank. To fulfill the promise of free two-day delivery, Amazon had to rush many of their orders using pricey expedited services at FedEx and UPS. By 2011, a former Amazon executive says, the company realized it would soon overwhelm FedEx and UPS during the holidays: “We were just going to blow them out of the water.” So, he says, Amazon decided to create an alternative.
Every week, we interview the journalists behind Bloomberg Businessweek’s cover story. In this edition, we speak with Devin Leonard, author of “Will Amazon Kill FedEx?”
The company tried the United Kingdom first. “We’ve created our own fast, last-mile delivery network in the U.K., where commercial carriers couldn’t support our peak volumes,” Bezos said in his 2013 annual letter to shareholders. “There’s more innovation to come.” The timing couldn’t have been worse for the Royal Mail, which had gone public that same year. The service had seen its letter volume decline, but predicted that package delivery would make up the difference. After Amazon started delivering many of its own boxes, the Royal Mail’s package volume in the U.K. all but flatlined. “That growth has now completely disappeared because of Amazon,” says David Kerstens, a European transportation analyst at Jefferies International in London. The Royal Mail disputes Bezos’s contention that it couldn’t handle all of Amazon’s packages. It declined to comment further.
At home, Amazon cozied up to the U.S. Postal Service in an attempt to reduce its dependence on UPS and FedEx. In November 2013 the Postal Service announced it would deliver Amazon packages on Sunday. Amazon also began building a chain of sorting centers that used machine learning to separate boxes by ZIP code and hurry them directly to the proper post offices for home delivery.
None of these efforts were enough to avert the Great Failure of 2013. That November, I happened to be at the UPS Global Operations Center in Louisville, working on a piece about an executive named Scott Abell, who was known at the company as Mr. Peak because he spent his entire year planning for the Christmas rush. Abell was cordial, but his mind was clearly elsewhere as he chatted in his division’s cubicle farm. He was frustrated by what he described as a large customer’s decision to radically increase the number of packages it wanted UPS to process on the weekend before Christmas.
Because of this surge, Abell said, he’d just spent five days coming up with a plan that called for more planes, extra package handlers, and double shifts at UPS’s gargantuan Worldport sorting center in Louisville. Abell wouldn’t name the vexing customer. But Jay Dennis, communications director for Teamsters Local 89, which represents Worldport workers, later told me it was Amazon. Even so, in December, UPS was swamped with Amazon packages and struggled to meet its deadlines. So was FedEx. Amazon made no secret of its displeasure. “Amazon fulfillment centers processed and tendered customer orders to delivery carriers in time for holiday delivery,” an Amazon spokeswoman said at the time.
“People blamed UPS,” says Robert Lieb, a professor of supply chain management at Northeastern University. “But the reality of the situation was Amazon dumped significantly more volume on UPS on Dec. 23 than they had agreed to give them. I mean, you can’t go out and lease more planes the day before Christmas, and you can’t put additional workers on.” Amazon and UPS prefer not to discuss the incident, but Steve Gaut, a UPS spokesman, says his company worked out a system so that it has more “visibility” into its customers’ holiday loads.
Either way, Amazon accelerated its effort to avoid any more holiday snafus. By the end of 2014, it had 23 sorting centers in the U.S. “A blitz is the way to describe it,” says Ben Conwell, a former Amazon real estate executive involved in the construction spree. “Those buildings couldn’t open fast enough.” The same year, Amazon launched Prime Now in New York, with couriers who drove cars, rode bikes, and took public transportation. “They have people riding the subway in New York with carts loaded up with Amazon boxes,” says Marc Wulfraat, founder of MWPVL, the supply chain consultant. “They use students, hustlers, people who are just trying to make a buck.” Amazon has since extended Prime Now to more than 40 cities. The service’s most popular items are bottled water and toilet paper, though the company also recently said it had delivered 300,000 condoms since Prime Now’s debut. Try calling FedEx next time your bedside drawer is empty.
Last September, Amazon introduced an on-demand delivery program called Amazon Flex. With Flex, people with transportation and some time on their hands log in to an app, indicate their availability, and then pick up and deliver Prime Now packages, much as Uber drivers do with people. Amazon Flex deliveries come in handy when there’s an unexpected surge in Prime Now orders, such as before a blizzard on the East Coast when the entire island of Manhattan is stocking up on canned soup. In the early hours of July 31, it was Flex couriers who transported copies of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to Prime Now customers.
There’s a downside to all of this, of course. Wherever Amazon directs its accelerating river of cardboard boxes, there’s a good chance that local resistance will arise. City officials in Hamburg say Amazon withdrew its plan to put a distribution center near a senior center and a kindergarten after residents, politicians, and even local police objected. “Amazon didn’t feel the need to get in touch with us, even after local media picked up on it,” says Michael Osterburg, a local Green Party leader. In June, Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, protested the arrival of Prime Now in her city, warning that it would foul the air, snarl traffic, and damage local businesses. “This operation may seriously destabilize the Parisian trade balances,” Hidalgo said. “This large American company did not see fit to inform Paris until a few days before the launch.”
UPS and FedEx have shrugged off Amazon’s threat to their business, in public anyway. On a conference call in February, UPS CEO David Abney was diplomatic: “Amazon’s a good customer of ours. We have a mutually beneficial relationship.” In an investor call the following month, FedEx CEO Fred Smith scoffed at the notion that Amazon might challenge his company, calling it “fantastical.” Lieb, the Northeastern professor, who’s been talking to CEOs in the shipping industry for 23 years, says they’re less confident in private. “When Amazon was talking about same-day delivery, people said, ‘Who cares? We don’t want that business anyway,’ ” Lieb says. But once Amazon began leasing planes, they started to worry. “Amazon’s market entry strategy has pretty much been ‘I’m going to come in and I’m going to beat you to death with low prices,’ ” he says. “If Amazon follows that tactic, they would destabilize this industry rather quickly.”
The fear has spread to Wall Street, where analysts say investors worry about what Amazon’s strategy means for the shipping industry. “The natural inclination among any observers of the market when they see Amazon is to be scared,” says David Vernon, a Sanford C. Bernstein analyst who tracks the shipping market. “Amazon is the epitome of a zero-sum game.”
Keeping workers connected, and motivated, at the Seattle hub.
“Please, no social media,” says an Amazon press relations person who, with his shaved head, looks a bit like Bezos. “I know it’s tempting, but you must respect the embargo.”
It’s a fine Thursday morning in Seattle. Amazon has shepherded more than a dozen journalists in a white bus to the private unveiling of its first Prime Air plane at a Boeing hangar on the city’s south side. A Boeing 767 is positioned to show off the Prime Air logo, painted in a friendly shade of light blue on the white fuselage. The tail is adorned with Amazon’s familiar swish—“the Amazon smile,” as a press handler helpfully points out. The next day the plane, which is called Amazon One, will make its public debut at the summer Seafair festival, flying over Seattle before a performance by the famous Blue Angels.
Clark, Amazon’s worldwide operations chief, walks up to a podium flanked by stacks of shipping boxes. With his plaid sport coat, blue shirt, boot-cut jeans, and slight paunch, Clark doesn’t look like an executive at a company that terrifies whole industries. He looks more like a junior high school band director, which he was before getting his MBA in supply chain management at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and joining Amazon 17 years ago. “It’s really kind of a surreal day,” he says. “I have to tell you, it’s hard to not be a little bit giddy. This is the first time I’ve actually seen the plane in person.”
Clark spends the next half-hour chatting amiably to reporters about what he calls “the beautiful plane.” He’s cagey about the ocean freight-forwarding license, but he confirms that Amazon has one, and that it’s mulling how to use it. “Our China team is a very creative group,” he says.
What about the mayor of Paris, who doesn’t relish Amazon’s delivery people racing through her city’s streets carrying toilet paper and condoms? Clark smiles and says, “The team is working closely there to make sure everybody is happy.”
Then Clark is done. He needs to leave to prepare for another “surreal” day tomorrow at Seafair. “I have two little boys,” he says. “At least for this weekend, I get to be a very, very cool dad.”
互联时代，电子商务中国已经领先美国，而且中国还有激烈的竞争。当日达，次日达也是可以免费的。
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