Over the past few years, Amazon's foray into providing logistics and storage for customers that sell their products through the Amazon marketplace has seen the company continue to build a worldwide network of warehouses accessible to clients at any point in their network.
Beyond convenience, maintaining tight margins to remain price competitive has been at the core of the Amazon thrust forward. As their organization is very technology-centric, clients are able to instantly compare the costs of storing product for shipping in their own warehouses versus sending them to Amazon's own warehouses. Detailed breakdowns make the buying decision easy for managers ready to make shipping decisions. And again, as they also feature information for their warehouses in Japan and other countries, clients are able to make decisions on more than one geographic area simultaneously.
For other providers, the trend towards having small businesses get involved in comparing Amazon's shipping services to their own has spawned a lot more interest in their own services. As an example, clients that have product available in Orange County will likely be looking at Amazon to store their products somewhere in Arizona. Because inland shipping of small quantities may add too much to the overall cost of using Amazon, they might find it to be less expensive to utilize third-party west coast distribution warehouses in Los Angeles.
As interest has grown, warehouses that cater to storing several businesses' products at once have added technology of their own and have become more competitive for both traditional warehousing and cold storage.
Where Amazon excels as a tech company in the perception of clients is as a storage and shipping facility. Does anyone remember the last time Amazon made a shipping mistake on someone's order? A cursory examination of the forums at the Amazon Marketplace will probably not uncover any instances. Another plus with the tech reputation is that most people do not presume that there will be any breakage of their products or loss from theft; both realities in any warehouse, despite the perception.
Another plus that Amazon potentially provides is that clients that have goods that are either perishable or will become outdated at a certain point, are able to manipulate their pricing and shipping online directly to initiate a sale or discount to move product from the same storefront from which their inventory is managed.