When Will Haire, CEO and founder of BellaVix, an agency that works with Amazon sellers, toured Amazon’s Las Vegas warehouse facility in March this year, he was impressed by the operation that employed 6,000 workers. In addition to the workers, a packaging machine that was boxing and taping the items that travel on the conveyor belt caught Haire’s attention because it was super fast.

“It’s insane how efficient it is with the robotics, and how they preserve privacy and maintain anti-theft [measures],” he said. “This obviously came with years of making mistakes and learning, but they’re going to be the world’s largest logistics company.”

The technology piece of logistics is possibly what Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos had in mind when he decided to launch Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA), which he described as—a set of web services that turned Amazon’s fulfillment center network into a giant computer device. “Pay us 45 cents per month per cubic foot of fulfillment center space, and you can stow your products in our network,” Bezos wrote in a letter to shareholders in 2006. Amazon’s FBA is a characteristic story of the 21st century because of its technology.

When it launched in 2006, Amazon FBA didn’t create much controversy, but neither were people discussing it as a major development or game-changer. Amazon’s big step into the not-so-glamorous world of logistics started off quietly. Today, Amazon’s wild ride in the business of picking, packing, and shipping items, is a well-oiled machine that brands maintain is essential to grow on the platform. FBA can ship items to customers in more than 100 countries. Experts also say that Amazon’s journey in its logistics business is very much in expansion mode.

Keep reading here.—VC

When Dick’s Sporting Goods announced the purchase of Foot Locker for $2.4 billion earlier this month, investors balked at the move. This week, Executive Chairman Edward Stack defended the acquisition in the Dick’s latest earnings call as a “unique opportunity to strengthen our brand relationships through a global presence,” and serve markets that it can’t currently with its largely US-based footprint.

The purchase gives Dick’s an opportunity to compete for market share around the globe rather than cede that ground to other retailers, Stack added. “I think what [Wall Street] needs to understand is that, like it or not, we don’t make investments for a quarter or two,” he said. “We make these decisions and investments for a lifetime.”

Keep reading here.—AV

May gave us a bit of déjà vu—the month started with another retail CEO being out of the job after an ethics policy violation, just two months after Rodney McMullen’s Kroger resignation. Here’s more on that, and other noteworthy moves in May:

• Kohl’s CEO Ashley Buchanan was ousted after pushing the retailer to conduct a “highly unusual” business deal with former Bed Bath & Beyond CEO Chandra Holt, who he was in a romantic relationship with—a violation of the company’s code of conduct. Chairman Michael Bender has assumed the role in the interim.
• Instacart CEO Fidji Simo will exit her role at the grocery delivery company to lead OpenAI as CEO of applications, and chief business officer Chris Rogers is slated to fill the vacant role, effective August 15.
• Bath & Body Works named Daniel Heaf as its new CEO, taking over for Gina Boswell, who joined to lead the personal care and home retailer in December 2022. Heaf was previously chief strategy and transformation officer at Nike before new CEO Elliott Hill eliminated the role.

Keep reading here.—EC