Out Of Toilet Paper
I was speaking to a friend today who had gone to Costco to buy some supplies for his household. He has a wife and three children, so he needs to buy in bulk to make things economical. He said to me that Costco had already run out of toilet paper as of today.
Now, it may be that they haven't actually run out, but are being strategic about things this time. Last time, the pandemic panic caught everyone by surprise, including the retail outlets. This time, they would have been preparing for it. It has been obvious to anybody following the current events that we will need, or at least be required to, lock down once again.
Last time most of the supermarkets ran out of things very quickly. Non of them was really equipped to handle the kind of traffic that was generated on their websites either. In the UK, the supermarkets operate delivery services either directly or via a third party like Ocado. They couldn't deal with the sheer demand of everyone going the online/delivery route though.
Only one company was up to the task. You guessed it - Amazon! They alone had the capacity to withstand the traffic in all aspects - online or in real life. Amazon has the world most advanced website infrastructure - even more so than Google or Facebook. They, Amazon that is, provide the website juice to all these other companies in the back end through their Amazon Web Services. While you had to virtually queue up to get on Asda's, M&S's or Sainsbury's websites, Amazon was operating normally.
In the 3D world, Amazon also did not need to rely on the heavily burdened Royal Mail network to delivery goods. They have their own fleet of delivery vans, contracted civilian drivers and even a network of drones and robots that deliver in places like Milton Keynes.
As a result, Amazon made a killing during the lockdown gone by. OMG did they make a killing. I could tell because even my Amazon Affiliate account caught fire with hundreds of orders and tens of thousands of clicks.
Anyway, one would hope the other retailers have learnt a great deal from the first round of the lockdowns. I do hope the scarcity we're starting to see is due to strategic stock management by the stores, and not actual scarcity.
Peace & Love,
Adé