Sources: Amazon is testing its own delivery service called Seller Flex; trial began this year in West Coast states, with broader rollout planned in 2018
Online retailer would deliver from other merchants' warehouses — Trial program underway on West Coast before national expansion
Context & Ripple Effects
Seller Flex is an early step in Amazon extending delivery operations beyond its own facilities, using merchants’ warehouses as pickup points. Related coverage later tracks that expansion into a delivery service for businesses and an online freight offering that matches shippers with truck drivers.
The operating model also reappears in a later test using Flex drivers for mall retailers and in a service enabling merchants to send inventory directly to stores and warehouses. That continuity makes the West Coast trial more than a last-mile experiment: it tests Amazon’s role across merchant-controlled inventory flows.
First-order effects
- Participating West Coast merchants can have Amazon collect and deliver orders from their own warehouses, while Amazon gains operational experience outside its fulfillment-center network.
- Seller Flex puts Amazon in direct control of the delivery leg for third-party inventory without requiring that inventory to enter an Amazon warehouse first.
Second-order effects
- A broader rollout would give Amazon a base of merchant-originated shipments for Shipping with Amazon, increasing its overlap with business-delivery providers.
- The same merchant pickup and routing capabilities can support later services for retailer deliveries and freight matching, linking last-mile operations to Amazon’s wider logistics offering.
Third-order effects
- Amazon’s logistics business is shifting toward a network that connects merchant warehouses, retailers, stores and carriers rather than one centered solely on Amazon fulfillment centers.
- If merchant adoption scales, delivery providers face a customer that can bundle marketplace access with transportation services, concentrating more of merchants’ fulfillment decisions inside Amazon.
The trend: Amazon is broadening from retailer-operated fulfillment into logistics infrastructure that moves goods for merchants from their own facilities.