After Closing Physical Stores, Amazon Doubles Down on One-Day Delivery

In his first letter to shareholders after replacing founder Jeff Bezos as CEO last year, Andy Jassy reiterated what Bezos always emphasized: that it remains “Day 1” at the e-commerce giant. This is meant to assure shareholders, who have historically practiced patience with any Amazon missteps, buying into the notion that with a willingness to innovate comes some risk of failure.

Amazon under Jassy, in a way, is endeavoring to get back to day one, after the pandemic interrupted some of its momentum. Most notably, the e-commerce giant had to abandon its 2019 promise to its Prime members that two-day delivery would get even speedier.

“[J]ust before COVID started, we’d made the decision to invest billions of incremental dollars over several years to deliver an increasing number of Prime shipments in one day,” Jassy wrote. “This initiative was slowed by the challenges of the pandemic, but we’ve since resumed our focus here.”