Amazon’s First Logistics Hire Explains Why Speed Decides Retail’s Winners

It’s easy to romanticize modern commerce: Tap a screen, and in hours or even minutes, groceries, gadgets and garments appear at your door. But behind that magical moment is a brutal, complex dance of logistics that most retailers are still fumbling to master.

Retailers love to admire Amazon, but few have internalized the lessons behind its logistics success, leaving the much of the sector’s logistics entrenched, territorial and still wildly unprepared for the demands of modern consumers.

“Retail teams and eCommerce teams were separate, and the incentives were different,” Manish Kapoor, founder and CEO at Growth Catalyst Group, said in a discussion hosted by PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster of his time consulting with big-box players like Walmart and JCPenney. “There was always this fear: if you support eCommerce, suddenly the foot traffic is going to go down.”

That resistance to change — and to thinking like a digital-first business — has led to poor infrastructure, broken processes and fragmented customer experiences.

As Webster recounted in a personal story, even high-end department stores are not immune.

“I ordered a pair of shoes online for pick-up at Neiman Marcus in San Francisco,” she said. “I was sent from the eighth floor to the shoe department and back again, only to find no one knew how to handle the online sale in-store.”

This has resulted in a digital and physical mismatch, where systems show inventory in one place, but the real-world operations say otherwise.

“We only notice logistics when it breaks,” Webster noted.

And that, perhaps, is the irony. The most important component of modern commerce is the one consumers never see, until it fails. But as customer expectations accelerate and technologies mature, logistics can no longer be treated as a back-end function.

Logistics Is the New Brand Experience

Today’s retail logistics is no longer just about trucks and warehouses. It’s about data, algorithms and customer experience. In many ways, in an age where speed, reliability and convenience rule, logistics is the face of the retail brand itself.

One of the biggest hurdles for retailers looking to embrace the concept of logistics-level brand building is the nascent complexity of last-mile delivery, which lies not in the technology but in the economics.

“The last mile is the most complex mile. The most expensive mile. If you don’t have the right density and volume, the economics don’t work,” Kapoor said.

In places like Manhattan, where delivery drivers can earn $50 an hour and may only complete two stops, same-day delivery becomes financially unsustainable. Contrast that with India, where dense populations and cheap labor allow companies like Blinkit to deliver toothbrushes within seven minutes — cheaper than going upstairs to get your own.

If logistics wasn’t already complicated enough, shifting tariff policies and geopolitical uncertainty are making it even harder for businesses to plan.

“You can’t change supply chains that fast. Once you go run in one direction, the direction changes and it’s super expensive to shift again,” Kapoor said.

His advice? Focus on controllables: better forecasting, tighter inventory management and improving financial health to absorb shocks.

“Amazon is a technology company that happens to do logistics. Most retailers are retail companies that use technology as an enabler. That’s the difference,” Kapoor said.

The Future Belongs to the Data-Driven

One of Webster’s most pointed questions gets to the heart of the matter: “Why haven’t retailers come together to build their own logistics network?”

It’s a question that haunts the industry. Competition and ego have paralyzed collective innovation, even when the opportunity is hiding in plain sight.

Kapoor answered candidly: “Can you imagine Target talking to Walmart saying, ‘Let’s work together’? It’s not going to happen.”

Efforts like ShopRunner, a FedEx-owned subscription platform that aggregated retailers for two-day delivery, fizzled. American Eagle’s acquisition of Quiet Logistics was a similar attempt to create a shared logistics layer — but again, no coalition materialized.

The real workaround? Third-party logistics providers (3PLs). Kapoor’s own company operates multi-tenant buildings where brands share infrastructure — unaware of each other — protected by strict non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). It’s an imperfect but practical answer to the collaboration conundrum.

Kapoor also described how fixed infrastructure, like FedEx’s Memphis hub, can become a strategic liability. After all, you can’t just tear it down and start fresh when consumer expectations shift overnight. Against today’s backdrop, nimbleness is the new North Star.

“The culture at Amazon is to work backwards from the customer. But even Amazon didn’t predict two-hour delivery expectations,” he said, noting that the future could be built on driverless vehicles. “Driverless delivery is already here. And it will come faster than drones. Drivers are the biggest cost, so reducing that changes everything.”

“None of this is rocket science,” he added. “But it requires going back to the basics — and moving forward with cohesion, speed, and above all, customer obsession.”