In 2015 Amazon came up with a wonderful and inspired idea of having a huge summer sale that it named Prime Day (PD) to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the company’s founding, a kind of ‘Black Friday’ in mid-July. Well it has become quite the event with more than one million deals on PD last year, and Prime members purchased over 100 million items during the event. The good news is that this is fantastic for the American economy and the bad news is that a large percentage of these packages in 2019 are coming to your leasing office!

On the first PD in 2015, Amazon customers ordered over 34 million items worldwide and this was 18% higher than what Amazon sold on the previous ‘Black Friday’. This means that PD effectively tripled in volume from 2015 to 2018.

PD now starts at 9:00 PM ET and runs through the end of the next day, effectively becoming PD for 36 hours - a very long ‘Day’.

Important Moments in Prime Day (PD) History:

2005 - Amazon launches its Prime service, with its game-changing free two-day shipping.

2015 - Amazon announces the first PD in a press release. The wording makes it clear that PD is intended to become the summertime ‘Black Friday’. Walmart, Amazon’s largest competitor wastes no time in saying that they too would conduct a ‘week-long’ summer sales event.

2016 - Now in its second year, PD continued to grow, Amazon sales accounted for 74% of all e-commerce conducted that day. At the same time, PD orders on Amazon’s mobile app doubled, compared to PD 2015.

2017 - The third year brings a preview feature that lets Amazon customers see the deals 24 hours before they go live. Also, Amazon makes PD deals available two hours early via Alexa devices. Two of the most popular items sold this year were pressure cookers and 23andMe home DNA tests. At this point, retailers like Macy’s, Kohl’s, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Dell, Walmart, and others are all holding mid-summer ‘Black Friday’ in July sales. PD sales grew 60% over PD 2016.

2018 - The fourth year brings a 36-hour PD, certain products for Prime members only, special deals at the newly acquired Whole Foods, and other special promotions. While the order volume this year caused even Amazon’s computer systems to crack at times, Amazon announced that PD was the biggest shopping event in its history with over 100 million products purchased and over 17 million transactions completed. It is estimated that during PD, Amazon accounted for 86% of all retail transactions and that 25% of all consumers planned to spend at least $100.

So, as an apartment owner/manager/developer, why do you care about all of this?

What this data shows is something that we all know by now, but we are not carefully considering the real facts and what it means to our future. Currently e-commerce is approximately 10% of overall retail in the U.S. and physical ‘bricks and mortar’ stores are just starting to deliver directly from the store to the home using delivery drivers such as Shipt, Deliv, etc. (not using typical mailing or delivery carriers like UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc.). In addition, Amazon and other retailers are now delivering in as fast as one hour, which means that they could come to an apartment community multiple times per day...when the order is ready - deliver in an hour, when the order is ready - deliver in an hour...kind of like delivering ‘hot pizza’, except it’s packages. This means that you are likely at the beginning of dealing with packages coming into your communities. Put these statistics together with the demographic at many apartment communities and you will find yourself as an apartment owner/manager/developer firmly in the ‘last mile’ of the logistics supply chain.

The increase in package volume, weight, and size along with an increase in carrier deliveries continues to rise at apartment communities. This means that new methods are needed to solve the problem. These new methods need to be more advanced, smarter, less expensive, and much faster with higher utilization of the precious physical space available to handle packages.

The keys to solving the package problem are speed and density. Advanced technology can authenticate carriers 24/7/365 at your outside gate, inside gate, and at the package room door. This makes sure that you have a higher level of security on your property and that your leasing staff is not spending their time managing carriers. The technology gets carriers on and off your property quicker, reducing the amount of time delivery trucks are blocking access to the community.

Advanced sensors are needed that measure the weight of packages, make positive and quick identification of packages coming and going in your package room. As package volume, weight, and size continues to increase, residents will want to find their packages in about 30 seconds. They do not care that hundreds of packages were delivered to your community that day. They are only interested in getting their package(s) quickly and going about their business. Advanced technology systems operate fast and are very powerful, keeping your leasing staff out of the package business and focused on leasing apartments.

Density in your precious package room space is super important. It is paramount to maximize the number of packages in your package room. This space has to accommodate the everyday growing volumes of packages coming in and accommodate PD, ‘Black Friday’, and ‘Cyber Monday’ (which all seems to last for four weeks during the holidays). Advanced technology allows you to put up to five times the packages in a given space and still allows your residents to find their packages in 30 seconds. This technology provides the best of both worlds...speed and density.

These systems are made up of sophisticated software (software is the key), advanced sensors (think weight), computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI). While these are fancy terms that you might think only a computer scientist would love, these technologies are becoming commonplace and are the building blocks toward solving complex and even more mundane problems going forward. You are likely to see these technologies being deployed in many everyday things.

This advanced technology can provide your residents with new and exciting conveniences and a 24/7/365 level of customer service not available today. The technology can do simple tasks like identifying and checking in packages and authenticating carriers at all times of day and night. What you want as an apartment owner is to provide great service for your residents at the point of need (not tomorrow, but right now) and do this without having to involve your leasing staff - they need to lease apartments. Plus, they are only available approximately 30 percent of the week. People pick up packages 24/7/365.

Advanced technology is here now and you might want to consider using it to solve the package problem at your communities. The world is evolving very fast and yesterday’s solutions for handling packages are becoming overwhelmed.

It is no secret that your residents want higher and higher levels of speed and convenience! Amazon built a huge business on providing ever higher levels of these two things...your residents cannot get enough of either one.