Since Amazon began muscling its way into the logistics and delivery business, it took a lot of customers and revenue from companies like UPS and FedEx. Since then, major logistics companies like FedEx have been actively seeking alternative solutions to the challenges presented by Amazon. However, one of these logistics giants has decided to take a page out of Amazon’s playbook and start its own E-Commerce platform.
FedEx said yesterday that it would provide online retailers with “end-to-end e-commerce solutions” through the launch of a new “data-driven commerce platform” named “fdx” this autumn. The company’s new platform is designed to assist companies with client sales, supply chain management, and delivery scheduling.
In a statement, the company stated that “fdx” will integrate current FedEx commerce tools, such as access to ShopRunner members—an online marketplace that FedEx purchased in 2020—with features that will launch in the fall, such as the capacity to build a “custom post-purchase experience” that will enable brands to provide customers with more precise shipment information or leverage FedEx’s shipment network data to improve order management.
What are FedEx’s Plans for its New E-Commerce Platform?
FedEx does not emphasise direct sales. It gives digital tools and data to businesses to help them manage their customer experience. The new platform comes as FedEx competes in logistics with Amazon, a company that FedEx has long viewed as a threat to its business.
FedEx declined to renew a contract to fly Amazon freight via FedEx Express in 2019. Later that year, Amazon prohibited its merchants from utilising FedEx for Prime delivery during the holidays, citing poor performance – a ban that was reversed the following year.
Opinion
I think this is a very important step forward in finally providing some real competition for Amazon. However, this is something that should have happened at least four or five years ago, but it is better late than never.
Amazon’s overwhelming dominance in the e-commerce industry has grown excessively, but this position is now being questioned, which promises to benefit consumers in the future. Competition helps limit the control Amazon has over the market and limits its influence on prices and costs of production.
Conclusion
UPS and FedEx have been falling behind Amazon, to the point where Amazon sent more packages to homes in the US in 2022 than any of them. That comes only a few years after the massive online retailer established a logistical network that primarily relies on closely supervised outside contractors—who, according to Amazon, are not its workers.
News Source: The Verge