AMAZON DISTRIBUTION NETWORK

Introduction

While taking a decision on the design of supply chain, companies should focus on its strategy,
decision on operations and most importantly, proper planning. In a company, based on the needs
of the customer and design of the systems, flow of supply chain management varies. While
designing, reviewing constantly at different stages also helps companies differentiate various
processes in their supply chain.

Amazon.com is an e-commerce company with its presence worldwide and headquartered in

Seattle, United States. Amazon.com, in its early days dealt only with Books but later on it
diversified into a lot of other product lines like Video Games, Electronics, Toys, Jewellery,
Furniture, MP#s, DVDs among other products. Today they are a huge $75 billion organization
with a very diverse product portfolio and successful operations round the globe. The new Kindle
Fire Tablet computer is one of their latest notable product and their Cloud Computing business is
one of the industry leaders. Going by the revenue, growth and market capitalization, Amazon is
the 4th most successful start-up of all times.

Jeff Bezos started this amazing company in 1994 with the intention of “Get Big Fast”. This
strategy was a brilliant one for the company in US as they were able to function with a
competitive lead time for delivery after the orders were placed. Now this strategy was also put in
place for the expansion in Europe. Not only were the European markets culturally different from
US but also the market conditions and the consumer behaviour & expectations different from a
consumer in US. The challenges here were very dissimilar to the operational challenges in US in
terms of transportation, stocking and distribution.