So did you get involved in this year’s Prime Day, either as a retailer or a shopper taking advantage of one of the many deals the retail giant was offering through its site? We’ll see the results of the sales bonanaza over the next few days but certainly Amazon was expecting big things and industry estimates suggested the event could be worth $3.5 billion worldwide. The sales promotion, the biggest of its kind so far, offered discounts across a range of products, exclusively available for Amazon Prime members.
Peak days such as this, whether natural or created, tend to stimulate spending in the rest of the market too and we will have a series of interviews shortly that look at how to plan for peak. Efficiency is, of course, vital and two stories this week offer technology that could help. In this week’s opinion piece from Scandit’s Samuel Mueller we look at how mobile order picking can help retailers – especially when having to pick more frequently and in smaller quantities than they have had to before.
And we also have news of another robot trial. This time it’s DHL which has been testing mobile robots from Fetch Robotics in the distribution centre DHL runs for technology group Wärtsilä in Kampen in the Netherlands. The success of the pilot, which also tested how robots and humans worked together, means the duo are now looking at further robot technologies to improve efficiency, safety and quality within the warehouse environment.
New research on the Irish market this week suggests that one in five shoppers in the country have experienced delivery problems and 12% said it was a recurrent problem with issues with up to ten of their online deliveries in the last year. One of the most popular complaints was late deliveries. Worldwide customers of TNT worldwide meanwhile have been facing delays after the company was hit by a computer virus attack last week. The company reassured customers this week that operations were almost back to normal after the attack.
And finally, don’t forget to put Thursday 5 October into your diaries. The combined IRC and EDC conferences will take place in London on that day. Early bird offers have been extended on tickets until August 1 so make sure you book soon!
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