Dive Brief:
- Delivery Service Partners, a program Amazon launched last year to provide funding to entrepreneurs looking to start parcel delivery businesses, is now open for current Amazon employees, Amazon announced today.
- The program provides $10,000 in funding and will pay the equivalent of the employee's salary with Amazon for three months while they get the business off the ground.
- "We’ve heard from associates that they want to participate in the program but struggled with the transition. Now we have a path for those associates with an appetite for opportunities to own their own businesses," Dave Clark, senior vice president of worldwide operations at Amazon, said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
This promise of $10,000 and a constant stream of Amazon deliveries could bring more delivery vans to the market and enhance Amazon's last mile capacity.
The added capacity will be necessary as Amazon has announced it will be speeding up its delivery by transitioning Prime two-day shipping to one day.
Amazon has said it will need to make changes to its delivery fleet to make this a reality along with the addition of new delivery stations.
When Amazon first announced its Delivery Service Partners initiative in June, Clark said it was aimed specifically at providing more capacity. "Customer demand is higher than ever and we have a need to build more capacity," he said last year.
Amazon says the employees who leave to start these businesses can do so "knowing they will have consistent delivery volume from Amazon."
The Delivery Service Partners program has already resulted in the creation of 200 small businesses since it was launched last June. It is looking to expand this to "hundreds more" this year. It has also expanded to the United Kingdom and Spain, according to Amazon.
