| > they should worry about Google Shopping Express and same-day delivery vs. 2-day after it's shipped. I'm sure they do. And I'm sure something will happen in the US too. Meanwhile in the UK, Amazon has started rolling out their own delivery depots to complement their large warehouses, and leaving partners to do local delivery from their depots instead of the full end-to-end delivery. Recently they announced that as a part result of this, they've signed a deal with a retail magazine distributor to deliver your packages to local shops etc. for pickup. Not quite Google Shopping Express - yet - but it means that you can shortly get your packages in ~12 hours nearly UK wide, from an inventory my local stores can't compete with, because they're constrained by the cost of retail space. > I mean, Amazon's delivery chain is absolutely amazing, but it simply can't compete with local delivery. Most of what I've ordered from Amazon over the last year isn't available from local shops. A lot of it isn't even available from Amazons UK warehouses, and end up getting drop-shipped from other parts of the world. That's what stops me from going other places: Amazon aggregates a whole lot of sources that extends the products available to me far beyond what a service that aggregates local companies can. And I bet that following the rollout of their local depots, they'll start predictively moving stock of their best selling products ahead of time to cut times further. Especially since the more they push through those depots, the more flexibility they will have in route scheduling for the last leg delivery to cut delivery times even further. |