A week ahead of Amazon’s annual summer sales event, the company’s facility in Henderson is already entrenched in preparations.
LAS1 is one of two Inbound Cross Docks that the company operates in Nevada. It is a massive sorting and distribution facility that receives products from suppliers and vendors, and immediately redistributes them to various regional fulfillment centers.
According to Jess Desautels, the general manager at LAS1, the facility typically processes around 15 million units a week. Desautels estimated that LAS1 experiences a 20 percent increase in product in the weeks leading up to Prime Day, a sales event for Prime members that will run from June 23-26 this year.
“The whole idea is speed,” Desautels said. “How can we get it to them in under a day and even faster?”
Desautels explained that any given unit will typically stay in the facility for mere hours, as it is received, sorted, routed and shipped to another location.
The company determines where to send specific inventory based on past customer data and advanced algorithms, added Matthew Gardea, a communications manager at Amazon.
“We don’t send out the packages from here,” Desautels said. “We are just creating the inventory that goes into the fulfillment centers.”
LAS1’s preparations for Prime Day began around four weeks before the actual sale, Desautels said. The facility ramped up the volume of the product it processes and hired 150 seasonal employees, each of which has the opportunity to move into a full-time role if they choose to.
While Prime Day launched in 2015, LAS1 is approaching its sixth year in operation. Desautels said that the facility has helped to expand what Amazon can offer to customers on Prime Day while maximizing the speed of delivery.
“Fulfillment centers used to have to do it all. They used to have to take in the inventory and then package it out for the customers,” Desautels said. “Now, we can take it in and then we send it to them, so they can just focus on customer orders.”
Desautels said her employees look forward to Prime Day every year, as they enjoy the opportunity to log extra hours and can take advantage of the sales through the free Prime membership they receive by working for the company.
While around 2,600 employees work at the facility as a whole, Natalie Banke, a public relations manager, said robotic technology has been incorporated throughout LAS1 in an effort to ensure the safety of the employees.
“In operations, in the industry, there’s a lot of repetitive movement that causes injury over time, so if we can automate that by a robot and make it more efficient and safer for our employees, we implement that,” Banke said.
Anya Tymoshevska, a senior operations manager at Amazon, said one of her favorite parts about the lead up to sales events and other major holidays is seeing the different inventory that will come through LAS1.
This year, she said she’s seen an increase in carbonated beverages, cat food and cat litter. She added that employees at LAS1 are hard at work to ensure that any product that customers desire will be available to them on Prime Day in “every corner of the United States.”
“Anything you want to order under the sun will probably go through this building,” Tymoshevska said.
Contact Sophie Baker at sbaker@reviewjournal.com.
