Automating the on-demand economy: keeping up with Amazon's 200,000 robots

Digital retail giant Amazon has over 200,000 robots helping deliver more than 350 million different products in an unceasing flood of billions of deliveries. Its fulfillment machine with both free and fast shipping has become a key competitive moat against other retailers: free shipping and 1-day or 2-day shipping is why Amazon customers chose Amazon. So how can other retailers, whether giants like Walmart or smaller brands, compete? One way is by stealing a march on the e-commerce behemoth and automating themselves.  In this episode of TechFirst, we chat with Locus Robotics CMO Karen Leavitt. Locus Robotics robots-as-a-service will pick more than a billion items in warehouse, fulfilment centers, and logistics hubs ... and the company just added more. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier