Amazon is known for its fast, inexpensive deliveries — and now the company’s taking it up a notch.
The ecommerce giant has redesigned its extensive logistics network to lessen the distance products must travel nationwide in a bid to get them to customers more quickly and increase profitability, The Wall Street Journal reported.
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U.S. parcel shipping reached a record high of 21.5 billion in 2021, according to a Pitney Bowes report; that same year, CNBC reported that Amazon was on track to become the largest U.S. delivery service by 2022.
Amazon significantly expanded its shipping network during the pandemic, approximately doubling its warehouse space in two years; now, it operates more than 1,000 facilities across the country, per WSJ.
According to executives, reinventing the delivery network became a priority post-pandemic-expansion, as the company also cites a connection between delivery speeds and continued growth.
“When we offer faster speeds, customers are more likely to buy something,” Udit Madan, Amazon‘s vice president of transportation, says. “They come back more often to shop with us.”
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Now, Amazon has designated eight regions that should operate “self-sufficiently.”
The new setup means that products won’t leave their regions unless absolutely necessary. That could change what customers see in their search results: Products that are already within a region may appear first, per Madan.