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Huge shipping containers filled with desiccants in the Pacific Ocean offer a glimpse of how the pandemic and the Amazon may change shopping as we know it.

Earlier this year, a company aterian It was clogged with homeLabs brand dehumidifiers. You may have read how difficult and expensive it is to make. transporting goods around the worldand Aterian felt the pain.

Michal Chaouat-Fix, Aterian’s chief product officer, said the company has been offered $25,000 or more to ship a shipping container from factories in China to customers in the US. Then Amazon got in touch and offered to put the dehumidifiers on its chartered cargo ships across the Pacific at a significantly lower cost.

“It was a huge relief,” said Chaouat-Fix. Amazon brought the goods to the port and Aterian arranged to transport them from there to US warehouses. These dehumidifiers were then available for purchase from Amazon, as well as Walmart, eBay, and the homeLabs website.

I follow Amazon closely, but I didn’t know until Aterian told me the company was chartering cargo ships for some merchants selling in the digital mall. of Amazon sea ​​freight service NS Not new, but has become more relevant global shipping went crazy this year. Amazon has also added new options as a relatively small service available to few merchants, the company tells me.

Amazon’s adventures on the high seas are an intriguing wrinkle in the battle to get products to our doorstep. Also another example Amazon’s growing network related to stores, package hubs, trucks, airplanes and delivery trucks that show the company has become a force in the entire lifecycle of products, from factories to our homes.

Aterian told its investors this week that Amazon’s shipping service is helping “secure very competitive shipping rates” for products that are expected to make up half of its expected sales next year. (Aterian’s best known product, squatting pottyMade in USA, No cargo ship required.)

One of the merchants like Amazon and Aterian shared destination: Making sure there are enough items on the virtual shelves for us to buy. Amazon has the money and weight to arm ocean freight companies so that their merchants can ship their products at an affordable price.

Sea freight service is one of the many options Amazon offers to millions of merchants. Texas toy company or the Chinese electronics conglomerate Anker – selling products to shoppers. For an additional fee, they can store their inventory in Amazon warehouses, ship their products through its own delivery network, and pay Amazon for more distinctive online images.

Traders often find these options useful, but also a source of frustration at times because of the costs and the feeling they feel very trusting sometimes on a variable partner. Yaniv Sarig, CEO of Aterian, was pragmatic about the power of Amazon and other huge gateways to consumers. “This is a fact of our world,” he told me.

It will be interesting to see what happens next in Amazon’s shipping ambitions. It once seemed inconceivable to imagine that Amazon would be in the same league as FedEx as one of America’s largest parcel shipping companies. Now.

This rapidly expanding Amazon logistics machine is a superpower for the company and Shipping from Asian factories is the logical next step. Sarig and some other close watchers of Amazon said they were wondering what the company could do next, such as operating its own US commercial port or ocean shipping fleet. (Amazon didn’t want to discuss this speculation with me.)

The coronavirus pandemic and the global product growls it has caused will (hopefully!) be temporary. But this may be a moment that will permanently change shopping and shipping.

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Before you go …

• The Chinese government mutes a shopping party: Singles’ Day, the annual shopping holiday invented by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, is normally a wild consumerism spree. My colleague Ray Zhong explains that the government’s crackdown on big internet companies forced a quieter Singles’ Day It aims to consume “with care”.

• VERY EXCITED about computer chips: New York Times Opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo explains why Apple self-designed computer chips power laptops and a breakthrough in technology.

• No-smelling government digital payments: Togo, one of the poorest countries in the world, has set up emergency aid for its citizens regarding the pandemic and has managed to deliver the money instantly via mobile phones. Bloomberg News explains How Togo got its digital payment system up and running in less than two weeks (Subscription may be required.)

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Empire State Building is on TikTok and her account is wonderfully unstable. Building Making fun of Times Square, goes crazy in other skyscrapers watching and hates lightning.

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