Amazon’s latest venture opens its logistics network to all businesses

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Amazon announced on May 4 that it is opening up its logistics network to outside businesses as an end-to-end supply chain solution.

Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS) will provide businesses with access to Amazon’s extensive freight, distribution, and parcel services, even if it is not connected to Amazon’s core e-commerce business. 

Amazon Supply Chain Services
(Image: Amazon)

“Amazon is bringing the infrastructure, intelligence, and scale of its supply chain services—proven over decades—to businesses everywhere, much like Amazon Web Services did for cloud computing,” said Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services.

Larsen added that “with the launch of ASCS, we’re confident we can give any other business access to the same cost efficiency, reliability, and speed that we’ve built for Amazon customers.”

Amazon named several large manufacturers that have begun leveraging Amazon’s supply chain services. Procter & Gamble is using Amazon’s freight services to transport raw materials to production facilities and move finished goods across its distribution network. Lands’ End, American Eagle Outfitters, and 3M were others included in Amazon’s announcement. 

(Image: Amazon)

ASCS includes Amazon’s AI demand forecasting and inventory placement models to improve speed and reliability.

Following Amazon’s announcement, many U.S. transportation stocks fell sharply. Joe Gilbert, portfolio manager at Integrity Asset Management, told Bloomberg News that Amazon’s development is “a shot across the bow to the entire transport market.”

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  • “a shot across the bow to the entire transport market.”
    That has got to be the understatement of the millennium. What Amazon really did was stand the entire supply chain industry in front of a firing squad, and pulled the trigger. In 10 years, 20 at the most, there will be no more UPS, FedEx, C.H. Robinson, or TQL. Amazon will own them all … trucking companies, airlines, steamship lines, railroads, warehouses, distribution centres, airports, seaports, rail terminals, you name it. They have the financial resources and the technology to do it and no one is going to be able to stop them, not even governments.

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