In the Seattle Times article “Amazon poised to take on UPS, FedEx in delivery business”, Jay Greene writes about the dynamics around Amazon’s moves to begin to manage it’s own package delivery system. There’s been a lot written about this over the past weeks and this has the potential to be quite significant in the logistics industry.  The bottom line is that the balance of power is shifting, certainly in the retail logistics arena – those that own or control the cargo are flexing their muscle and the impacts will be extensive for legacy logistics systems.

This will likely have potentially powerful impacts throughout the whole of the logistics chain on both sides of the world, creating new competition and transport pricing pressure.  The fast evolving ecommerce business model is challenging to understand for those on the outside.  With Alibaba and Amazon and their smaller pursuers controlling information and controlling more and more cargo product volume, they can dictate the rules.  Amazon will likely take a hit later in terms of its stock valuation given the massive investments that it is (and will be) making, but this is just a part of a fundamental evolution.

Moreover, with unfolding creativity in final mile delivery, the B2C logistics space will be a fascinating place for some time. Stay tuned.

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazons-delivery-ambitions-take-on-industry-giants/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article_left