To
celebrate Prime Day and an accompanying photo contest, Amazon
commissioned local artists in every Prime-eligible country to create art
inspired by its concept of #PrimeLiving. Here is the Tokyo piece by
Whole 9. Amazon
For Amazon Prime members, Christmas is coming early this year.
To
celebrate Amazon's 20th birthday next week, the e-commerce giant is
introducing Prime Day, offering up what it claims will include "more
deals than Black Friday." The summer sale will be held Wednesday, July
15 -- the day before Amazon.com first launched two decades prior -- with
special deals rolling out as often as every 10 minutes throughout the
day.
These
deals, though, will only be available for new and existing Prime
members -- folks who pay an annual fee for free two-day shipping, a
streaming-video library and other benefits -- who live in the US, UK,
Spain, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Canada and Austria.
An Amazon spokeswoman said the company doesn't have any future plans to share on whether Prime Day could become an annual event.
In the run-up to Prime Day, Amazon is holding a #PrimeLiving Photo Contest,
asking its customers to submit photos that show off Prime's benefits.
One winner from each Prime-eligible country will get a $10,000 Amazon
gift card (roughly £6,430).
Amazon's automated attendants (pictures)
In
a massive 1.2 million square foot warehouse in Tracy, Calif., more than
3,000 robots are helping Amazon keep up with customer's orders.
The
Kiva robots, pictured here, are square, squat utilitarian machines.
They're able to lift as much as 750 pounds, allowing them to bring
shelves to the employees packaging orders.
There
are now more than 15,000 Kiva robots in use at Amazon fulfillment
centers in the United States. They have increased the capacity of the
warehouse space, with the centers able to hold 50 percent more inventory
using the Kiva system.
The Kiva robots have helped reduce processing times for some orders to mere minutes from several hours before.
Kiva
robots travel through the warehouse, find appropriate products and
deliver the entire shelf right to the human-staffed order-filling
station.
The
Kiva robots line up, and when it arrives, the employees -- called
"pickers" -- selects the proper items from the shelf. Rather than the
employees wandering through a massive warehouse to find an item, the
shelf come right to them.
Dave
Clark, Amazon's senior VP of worldwide operations and customer service,
stands at a picking station alongside robot staffed mobile shelves.
Looking
down at one of the 3,000 Kiva robots which swarm through the 1.2
million square foot Amazon fulfillment center in Tracy, Calif.
A
look at the center eye on top of the Kiva robot, which aligns itself
with the shelf, lifts it up, and carries the product-filled shelf to the
order-filling "Picker."
The Kiva robots move quickly and silently through the warehouse, efficiently helping to fill orders.
This
Tracy, Calif., fulfillment center also houses some Amazon Fresh grocery
delivery operations, but that system has not been robotized, yet.
A
look down the aisles of the 1.2 million square foot fulfillment
centers. A seemingly endless maze, with Kiva robots patiently
negotiating one another's paths.
Moving along a zipping conveyor belt, boxes ready for delivery are separated by destination, and loaded on to trucks for.
A
Kiva robot lifts a shelf of goods just off the ground and moves through
the warehouse to one of the order filling "picking stations."
Boxes
rattle along conveyor belts, up ramps and down chutes on the path to
order fulfillment. The loud drone of machinery fills the air, filling
orders 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Amazon says it plans to hire more than 80,000 seasonal workers this holiday season.
Prime
Day serves as yet another example of Amazon's long-term effort to bring
more customers to Prime, which was introduced in 2005 and now has an
estimated 40 million US members. A key reason for this strategy is that
Prime members spend a lot more on Amazon -- about $1,500 yearly,
compared with $625 for non-members, according to
Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. In addition to the July 15
event, Amazon this year has been expanding Prime Now, a new
rapid-delivery service that's also exclusive to its Prime members.
Related stories
Amazon's
combination of cheap deliveries, deep discounts and huge inventory have
helped it become a leader in e-commerce. Yet the company needs to keep
thinking up new ways of marvelling customers to make sure they keep
going to Amazon and not one of its many rivals. New competition to Prime
is coming from Walmart which is piloting a $50-a-year, free three-day
shipping program called ShippingPass. Also, Jet.com plans to launch its new membership retail website later this year that could become another threat to Prime.
Prime
Day will start on July 15 at midnight Pacific Time (3 a.m. Eastern Time
or 8 a.m. UK time) and will run through until 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time
the same day. The event will include seven "Deals of the Day" and
thousands of short-term "Lightning Deals." Also, although these deals
are only available to Prime members, Amazon offers 30-day free trials of
the US service at Amazon.com/prime.
The
company is planning other activities on its birthday, July 16, to
celebrate 20 years of reading, according to the spokeswoman, to honor
Amazon's origin as an online bookstore.
