In the six years since Amazon held its first Prime Day, the marquee shopping event has always been held in mid-July as an attempt to drum up sales during the sluggish summer season.
But on Tuesday, when the two-day event kicks off, Amazon will see whether it can successfully push consumers to search out deals more than a month before the holiday shopping season traditionally begins.
The company pushed back its annual discount shopping event from mid-July to Oct. 13-14 after the coronavirus pandemic generated unprecedented strain on its fulfillment and logistics operations.
Facing a deluge of online orders, Amazon quickly began to run out of stock of items on its site and couldn’t meet its vaunted Prime two-day delivery window.
Over the ensuing months, Amazon worked to return conditions in its warehouses to normal by prioritizing shipments of essential goods.
It brought on 175,000 new warehouse and delivery workers to help shoulder the load.
Amazon kept more than 70% of the employees it added, signaling that online orders continue to flood in long after the panic buying tapered off.
The company has been busy expanding its warehouse footprint, with the goal of growing its global network square footage by 50% in 2020, up from a 15% increase in 2019.
Amazon said it’s on track to open 33 new fulfillment centers in the U.S. this year.
It has also added a slew of new delivery stations, which allow Amazon to get closer to customers and speed up deliveries.