Amazon.com announced last week that it will open two new warehouses, both in Kentucky, for an additional 1.4 million square feet in distribution capacity. The expansion will bring the company's total space to more than 2.5 million square feet, several hundred thousand feet more than Ingram Book Group and nearly double that of Baker &Taylor Books (though Amazon acknowledged there might be "some underutilization as we grow to fill our capacity").
The smaller Amazon facility, in Campbellsville, currently has a capacity of 570,000 square feet, which will be expanded to 770,000 square feet by the end of the year. The facility in Lexington has a capacity of 600,000 square feet.
The new warehouses will be used to cut shipping time to Midwestern cities for books, CDs, videos and other items sold directly from Amazon's site. Products like drugs and auction items are not presently warehoused by Amazon. Both facilities will be leased by the company and should begin operations by the end of its third quarter.
Although the two DCs are located within the same state, Amazon.com director of publicity Bill Curry told PW, "We think of them as two distribution centers in a global distribution network."
The announcement marks the fourth time the company has doubled its existing warehouse space and means that by January 1, 2000, Amazon will have gone from 300,000 square feet of DC space to eight times that amount in little more than two years. About whether more openings could be announced, Curry quipped: "Film at 11."
