Amazon.com has become a dominant online retailer
through a combination of vast product offerings and
speedy order fulfillment. The secret, says Dave Clark,
is in the people and the technology.

ON BLACK FRIDAY THIS HOLIDAY season, e-commerce behemoth Amazon.com had 29 million visitors, according to a report in Forbes magazine. On Cyber Monday, Amazon led all other e-commerce businesses. While overall e-commerce sales enjoyed a healthy 17-per- cent jump over 2011 Cyber Monday levels, Amazon’s sales for the day climbed 42 percent, according to Businessweek.

Those millions of visits mean millions of orders, and getting those orders out the door for delivery to customers as soon as the next day—or in some cases, the same day—is an enormous undertaking for the company’s fulfillment operations. Add rapid growth to the mix, and the challenge becomes mind-boggling. Yet it’s one that the company meets thousands of times a day.

Overseeing that vast fulfillment opera-
tion is Dave Clark, vice president of glob-
al customer fulfillment for the online
retailing giant. He is responsible for the
company’s supply chain, transportation,
and fulfillment networks in North
America, Japan, and Europe.