Sunday, June 10, 2007

Selling DC space,expertise, and manpower - Sold on eBay, Shipped by Amazon.com

A New York Times article from a few months back caught my attention. The article details Amazon.com's efforts to sell distribution services to small businesses. In short, a small company can warehouse material in Amazon's distribution center(DC) where the material is stored until the time of order. When the small business receives an order Amazon.com ships the material directly to the end user thus eliminating or greatly reducing warehousing and distribution expenses for the small business. Amazon.com's idea of selling distribution services is an interesting idea and extension of their concept of selling web services such as data storage.

Do you think CDW, Grainger, or Henry Schein could sell their excess distribution center capacity to small businesses? If they had the capacity would the margins of the business be worth their time?

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