Amazon are planning a massive expansion for their new low cost store which launched in the US in November last year. It’s their answer to Temu and SHEIN, to cut out the white label middle man and list everything ‘Generic’, i.e. low cost low asp product shipped direct from China.
Amazon describes Haul as ‘a shopping experience in the Amazon Shopping app that provides customers in the U.S. a place to discover even more affordable fashion, home, lifestyle, electronics, and other products with ultra-low prices with everything priced at $20 or less’.
Slow delivery goes against everything Amazon have built over the past few decades, where they’ve pretty much single handedly trained us to expect everything to arrive tomorrow, if not today. But the economy is hurting consumers and they’ve voted with their wallets to shop on Temu and sacrifice speed for low cost so Amazon have having to follow.
Now a job advert (since deleted) reveals Amazon are on the hunt for a Software Development Engineer to work on Haul with plans to raise it’s profile in the US and launch worldwide later this year… by which we can only deduce that the UK and Europe will be top of Amazon’s expansion plans.
This team is driving two 2025 S-team goals to make haul “Go Big” in the US and launch WW this year. Our team is on a mission to completely reimagine the end-to-end customer journey for Retail products – from the front-end Shopping experiences all the way through the backend supply chain (Seller experience, Operations, . Engineers in this team have the opportunity to work on all Retail surfaces – from Homepage, DP, Search, PurchaseX, P13N, Accounting, Pricing, Tax, Returns, DEX etc. It’s a massive challenge, but also a chance to make a huge impact.
– Amazon
Amazon are betting big on Haul which suggests that early adoption in the US has been positive. Amazon have a history of putting all their resources behind a project that shows promise, although they’re equally as quick to pull the plug if a project falters. But by putting two S-teams (Senior leadership teams) behind the Amazon Haul project it shows that this will be a big focus for 2025 so keep an eye out for developments.
