Executive works magic at Amazon
In spearheading the launch of the superfast Prime Now delivery service, Amazon.com executive Stephenie Landry knew the challenge would be steep.
It was unclear whether customers really wanted a service that delivered their Amazon purchases within one or two hours; no focus groups were held to determine that.
But Landry, a rising star at Amazon who has participated in a series of high-profile projects at the company, including the creation of AmazonFresh grocery deliveries nearly a decade ago, was confident they would.
In the mock news release that’s part of every Amazon pitch, the 38-year-old native of New York jokingly called the service “Amazon Magic,” a reference to products appearing on the consumer’s doorstep so quickly that it could be deemed an act of wizardry.
“The idea of making deliveries faster is in the DNA of the company,” Landry said.
Prime Now got its initial green light in August 2014. There was little time to lose. “We really wanted to get it out before the holiday,” Landry said.
To make things interesting, her team picked New York City for the launch, a city where traffic-clogged streets can be a deliverer’s nightmare. “We knew it’d be one of the hardest places to break into,” she said. “If you can make it there, you can make it everywhere.”
For members of the $99-a-year Amazon Prime subscription service, Prime Now delivers a whittled-down selection of products, as well as restaurant meals and bags of goods from selected grocers. Two-hour deliveries have no added charge; if you’re really in a rush, you can pay $7.99 to get that USB cable in an hour or less.
Now offered in 30 cities in five countries, Prime Now is a key test of Amazon’s ability to provide shoppers instant gratification, perhaps the last refuge of brick-and-mortar retailers. It also shows the tech giant’s knack for tinkering with its model, something CEO Jeff Bezos extolled last month in a letter to shareholders. “To invent, you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work it’s not an experiment,” Bezos wrote.
Landry, whose title is vice president of Amazon Prime Now, first came to work at Amazon as an intern in 2003, when she was in business school at the University of Michigan. She remembers a cab driver who picked her up at the airport in Seattle asking her whether “that Internet thing” had taken off yet.
It did, and so did Landry’s career. After joining Amazon for good in 2004, she held a series of jobs of increasing responsibility, helping launch the AmazonFresh grocery-delivery service and the Prime Pantry household-essentials business, as well as leading the online stores’ baby and mom categories.
In 2013, Landry became a technical adviser to Jeff Wilke, one of Amazon’s most powerful executives. That gave her an “incredible perch to view the company,” she said.
Landry’s commanding job in the tough frontier of e-commerce comes at a time when there’s plenty of concern about how the tech industry, one of the few shining beacons amid tepid economic growth, is disproportionately staffed by men.
Amazon says it reviewed its compensation in 2015 and found no bias in salaries, with women earning 99.9 cents for every dollar that men earned in the same jobs.
But like other tech companies, Amazon has an employee roster that reflects an imbalance: 61 percent of employees and three-quarters of managers are men.
Landry said the gender gap is the result of deep-seated structural issues that Amazon and her colleagues are working to correct in order to foster a pipeline of female talent. Every summer, Amazon hosts an immersion program for “Girls Who Code,” which teaches high school girls programming basics.
In an environment that has a reputation for being tough, Landry, who said she prefers focusing on the problem-solving aspect rather than the money-making side of an operation, has made a mark. Wired magazine named her one of “25 geniuses who are creating the future of business.”
“Stephenie Landry is the force responsible for the instantaneousness of your gratification,” the magazine said.