Amazon triples number of items with Dash Buttons
Latest brands include Charmin, Brawny, Doritos and Trojan
It’s been a year since Amazon unleashed its first batch of Amazon Dash Buttons, the hockey rink-shaped instant order buttons tied to popular brands for baby formula, coffee, detergent, paper towels, razor blades and other products.
And now, on this first anniversary, Amazon is tripling the number of available Dash Buttons to more than 100.
The latest brands include Brawny, Charmin, Clorox, Doritos, Energizer, Lysol, Peet’s Coffee, Playtex, Purina, Red Bull, Starbucks, Trojan and Vitamin Water.
Among the existing Dash participants are Bounty, Gatorade, Gerber Formula, Gillette, Huggies, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Maxwell House, Tide and Ziploc.
You still must be an Amazon Prime member to take advantage of Dash. The program is built around the idea that you’d stick a button near products that you frequently need to replenish. Then, when you’re about to run out of the item, you press and release the appropriate Dash Button to automatically place an order through Amazon, with products shipped for free through Prime. The buttons work via Wi-Fi.
Amazon says that most customers who’ve embraced Dash so far have multiple buttons. To avoid ordering the wrong product, the product name and/or logo is imprinted directly on the appropriate Dash button. And to avoid trouble should your hungry kid, say, keep pushing the Mac & Cheese button, only the first press is recognized until the order is delivered. (You do get the opportunity to cancel orders.)
Amazon Dash director Daniel Rausch says that over the past three months, Dash Button orders have grown by more than 75%. And he says that customers are using Dash Buttons more than once a minute.
Amazon charges $4.99 for Dash Buttons, although for now your first order is credited back by that same amount.