Over the past decade Amazon has developed an incredible infrastructure of warehouses and fulfilment centres dedicated to delivering toilet paper and books within hours. For customers, these spaces are invisible, rarely thought about or even seen. But a new map reveals exactly where they are — and how quickly they’re springing up.
The map was compiled by Channel Advisor‘s CEO Scott Wingo and creating it sounds like an incredible chore (you can read the full blow-by-blow on his blog post). Wingo explains that the biggest areas of growth for Amazon this year were in Eastern Europe, where several new fulfilment centres were built, and India, where there are rumoured plans to build four new FCs.
There are also plans to build 15 new “Sortation” Centres in the US over the next few months in preparation for the Christmas boom. What’s the difference between a Sortation and Fulfillment Center? shipping debacle like the one that plagued customers last year.
It’s a pretty interesting set of maps — and you can bet it’s going to change drastically over the next 12 months. See the US map below. [Re/Code; Channel Advisor]