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Retailer hoping for a big boost this year from Cyber Monday shoppers
Workers at Amazon’s four fulfillment centers in metro Phoenix were busy on Cyber Monday, trying to keep pace with the volume of orders. B5 Also » Amazon.com hopes to develop drones for delivery.
Workers at one of Amazon’s four fulfillment centers in metro Phoenix were busy on Cyber Monday, trying to keep pace with a staggering volume of orders.
Amazon was tracking sales throughout the day to see if it might surpass last year’s Cyber Monday, when customers ordered 26.5 million items worldwide or more than 300 items per second.
“This entire week is a mini shopping season within the holiday shopping season,” said Craig Berman, Amazon vice president of global communications.
More than 131 million people were expected to shop online on Cyber Monday, up 1.5 percent from a year earlier, according to a National Retail Federation survey.
That follows the four-day Thanksgiving holiday shopping weekend when 141 million shoppers visited stores nationwide and spent $57.4 billion, the federation said. Average spending per shopper was down 3.9 percent, to $407. See video of one of Amazon’s Phoenix fulfillment centers.
The IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark report said overall online sales on Cyber Monday were up 18.7 percent over last year.
Cyber Monday is the Monday following the Thanksgiving holiday, when online retailers promote sales and typically experience their largest volume of sales.
Amazon’s fulfillment center near 51st Avenue and Buckeye Road nearly doubled its staffing level on Monday to about 4,000 workers over 24 hours to keep pace with orders. The warehouse of 1.2 million square feet, equal to 20 football fields, is highly automated with high-speed conveyor belts, scanners, automatic postage and labeling machines, and workers packaging items for delivery.
Omar Murillo, 20, of Phoenix, was packaging items collected by Amazon “pickers,” who go through the warehouse fulfill- ing orders and placing them in yellow, plastic boxes. Amazon’s automated system tells packers like Murillo what size box to use for each item and how much bubble wrap and packing tape to use.
Venessa Williams, a seasonal worker from Mesa on her second day of work, was busy picking items off the warehouse shelves. Items are stored in a random order. A portable audio system can share shelf space with a puzzle, and feret food can be side by side with a tiny bottle of lens cleaner. A handheld computer guides pickers to each item.
Starting pay for Amazon’s permanent employees is $12 per hour, with health benefits and shares of company stock that can add12 percent to their annual pay, Berman said. Seasonal workers start at $11 per hour. Amazon hired about 7,000 seasonal fulltime workers for the holidays. Total employment for the company is about109,000.
Amazon has 96 fulfillment centers worldwide and 40 in the United States.