How Amazon's Prime Now can get an order to your door in an hour
Culture
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Prime Now is Amazon's year old rapid delivery service.
We visited their new urban distribution center in Manhattan to see how they get last minute holiday orders to you.
What have some of the challenges been Creating a distribution center in the middle of Manhattan.
We're standing right in the center, literally, of Manhattan.
We're on 34th Street.
That's both a blessing and a challenge.
Obviously this is a pricey place for real estate right in the center of everything.
But it also means that we can get to all customers we have in this really dense area in less than an hour.
And so it's actually a great location to be.
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Once your order is received, an Amazon employee will retrieve your items and get them ready for delivery.
Customers might be surprised at the diversity of products that we carry, and also the way that they're actually stored on the shelves.
We actually store the items on the shelves as soon as they come in.
Those items are put directly on the shelves and they're available for sales to customers right away.
And then our back end algorithms actually tell the folks who are picking the orders how to do it in the fastest way possible.
So it looks a little bit crazy with all this different stuff on the shelves, but it actually gives us a lot of efficiency.
Right here are examples of our Kindle Fire HD.
This is an XBox.
These are great gifts for the holiday.
I see Adele right there, that's one of our number one sellers right now.
And of course we have tons of wrapping paper so that people who have last minute needs can get all of their stuff wrapped in time.
When a package is ready, a courier will walk, bike, or drive it to you.
With any luck even procrastinating shoppers can get that Xbox or flat screen TV in time for the holidays.
This is Ben [INAUDIBLE] Ribbon with CNet, thanks for watching.
