If you follow Amazon, you know CEO Jeff Bezos has global ambitions. Amazon already registers 39 percent of its revenue overseas, and the company is just ramping up investment in promising e-commerce markets such as China and India.
The Maps That Show Amazon’s Plans to Rule the World
Fulfillment centers and “sortation centers” around the globe.
Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.
So what does this global ambition look like on a map? Funny you should ask! A company called ChannelAdvisor, which helps companies sell goods on Amazon, eBay and other shopping marketplaces, has you covered. ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo today published a blog post examining how many warehouses Amazon has and where they are located. It’s a logistics nerd’s paradise.
Some of the warehouses are what Amazon calls fulfillment centers: These are big ol’ buildings where Amazon holds product inventory and from which it ships stuff out to customers. Some are what Amazon calls “sortation centers”: A newer type of facility, typically smaller than fulfillment centers, where orders are sorted in-house rather than by a partnering shipping company. And some, represented by a wrench, are under construction.
A couple of things to note here: Wingo says his company used a combination of press reports, job postings and an analysis of actual shipping addresses to come up with this map. So while this looks to be a very comprehensive list, there’s no guarantee that ChannelAdvisor has uncovered every single Amazon center operating or in the works. An Amazon rep declined to comment.
Also, look at the build-out overseas. Amazon is working on four new warehouses in India, according to the map, as part of a $2 billion investment it recently announced. The map also shows nine fulfillment centers in Germany, where Amazon has a $10 billion business but has run into problem with a labor union. The company also appears to already have at least a dozen fulfillment centers in China. Watch out, Alibaba?
Here’s the map of the U.S.:
And here’s the map of Europe and Asia:
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
