Nov 18, 2019 23:00:00

What is the reason why twice a day's population of luggage flows into a small town without an Amazon warehouse?

by

Global Panorama

The town of Roundup in Montana, USA was originally a self-sufficient person and rancher, and although it prospered as a coal mining town, it was a small town with less than 2000 residents as of 2019. It is. In recent years, this round-up has become a strange 'Amazon hub', and it is said that about twice the number of inhabitants will flow daily. The details of how the Amazon unofficial warehouse is functioning are revealed.

Why thousands of Amazon packages converge on a tiny Montana town-The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20961523/amazon-walmart-target-package-delivery-sales-tax-montana-roundup

Amazon has warehouses and fulfillment centers around the world, but none in the roundup. What is in the round-up is what is called 'Prep Center (Preparation Center)', which is not an official facility of Amazon. The Prep Center is a facility that specializes in “packing products” to meet the standards of Amazon warehouses that are becoming more automated.

The reason why the round-up became Amazon's hub goes back to 2015. Kristal Graham, who was 39 years old at the time, became obsessed with the marketplace world because he used Amazon's marketplace to sell his deceased brother's book.

Amazon Marketplace is a third-party sales platform that is not officially available on Amazon. Graham was originally using the marketplace to sell his brother's books, but when the books were in stock, he came up with the idea of selling books purchased from other retailers on Amazon.

Such resale is not unusual on Amazon. However, in order to use the fulfillment center, which is an Amazon distribution center, packaging that corresponds to an automated fulfillment center is required. This is because at the fulfillment center, the automated robots move to carry luggage and human power is kept to a minimum.

I have seen an autonomous robot that carries the entire Amazon shelf on the back of the huge logistics system `` Amazon Robotics ''-GIGAZINE

To meet the fulfillment center's requirements, old barcodes must be replaced with new barcodes, glass must be wrapped in packaging, and instability items must be secured in boxes. Graham who read this need started a prep center business that repacks items purchased by resellers, and has multiple facilities in areas without consumption tax such as New Hampshire, Oregon, Delaware as of November 2019 It came to be. Resellers can increase their margins by a few percent by entering these prep center addresses when purchasing items from retailers such as the target .

As soon as Graham started his business, he received packages from stores throughout the United States such as Walmart and Target. Graham hired dozens of employees because of too much baggage, including family members and friends. However, the amount of inflow was so large that heavy work was done for a long time, and the friendship broke down. Linda, who left Graham, started a similar business on his own. When Linda's neighbor told Jill, a friend of business, Jill started the business. The number of round-up prep centers has increased rapidly as women with various circumstances such as dismissal and relative care start a similar business. In the round-up, it is said that every day, 3000-4000 Amazon packages, which are about twice the population of the town, are received.

Graham stands in the prep center.

You can see the huge size of the prep center from the photo.

Over the past few years, marketplace sellers have developed software to find products that can benefit from web scraping . However, the logistics system lacked facilities to check that the actual product was normal and to repackage it according to Amazon specifications. The prep center just met the demand here.

With the advent of the Prep Center, items such as shoes and toys are first transferred from retail stores such as Wal-Mart to the Prep Center, then repackaged and sent to Amazon's fulfillment center, where they are finally delivered to consumers. It was. Also, when a reseller purchases a product from an Amazon third party who does not use prime shipping, the strange situation that the package delivered from Amazon to the prep center is repackaged and delivered to Amazon again It is happening. This is called 'Amazon Flip'.

Regarding the situation where items are simply circulating between warehouses, Graham said, `` I think it is strange, and how much people go through the warehouse and how many people are in the hands of it ' However, people who actually purchase products on Amazon do not notice that because they only magically experience “the product arrives the day after the order”. Even Graham, who runs the business of the prep center and knows the other side, has to rely on Amazon for roundups where there are few shops and supplies are not available.