Classic 2000s pop music is playing in the background as associates shunt clanging metal carts around Amazon’s same-day delivery facility in Peachtree Corners Tuesday morning.
It’s the start of Prime Day, an annual event for Amazon Prime members with an array of deals and discounts. It’s also one of the busiest times of the year for Amazon fulfillment and shipping centers like the one in Peachtree Corners in Gwinnett County. Nitish Shekhar, who’s the site lead for the facility that delivers to parts of metro Atlanta, expects to handle at least 10,000 more packages a a day than usual for the event.
“We try and keep our associates busy in a normal day as well, but there are times when we don’t have a lot of work,” he said. But during Prime Day, the facility is at “100% capacity, 100% utilization,” he said.
This year’s Prime Day event, though, is taking place under a new set of stressors. Amazon extended the event from the usual 48 hours to 96 hours amid tariff-related price concerns and low U.S. consumer sentiment, a measure of the health of the U.S. economy determined by consumer opinion. Businesses sell their products via Amazon’s platform, and those businesses might be affected by tariffs that could affect the number of discounts offered to consumers.
Meanwhile, retail giant Walmart is also hosting “Walmart Deals,” its own event similar to Prime Day for Walmart+ members — and the company also plans to expand drone delivery in metro Atlanta.
Amazon, with its extended four-day sale, said Prime members will have “more time and flexibility to conveniently shop, while enjoying exclusive deals and incredible savings,” according to a written statement from Greg Rios, a spokesperson for the company.
Adria Marshall, a Clarkston-based seller of products from her wellness brand Ecoslay, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that though wholesalers her company works with have been impacted by tariffs, that hasn’t necessarily affected her sales through Amazon.
“Prime Day is a different day rather than a normal day on Amazon, because of the extraordinary amount of traffic that we’re able to take advantage of,” Marshall said. “So, we really amp up our promotion. Everything is on sale — but in addition to that, we’re really running a lot of ads as well to bring those new customers to our brand.”
At the Peachtree Corners facility, things are moving quickly. The facility is smaller than Amazon’s other warehouses in the area — 150,000 square feet as compared with 640,000 square feet in Amazon’s Stone Mountain ATL2 warehouse — but mighty.
Because it is a same-day delivery location, orders can be delivered to customers the same day an order is placed in select ZIP codes. Amazon is looking to expand same-day delivery to more rural parts of the U.S. in the coming years, including in Georgia. But for now, the Peachtree Corners facility deals with primarily the northern and eastern parts of the metro area.
Amazon by the numbers
- Prime Day is July 8-11 this year.
- Prime Day deals require an Amazon Prime membership, which costs $139 per year or $14.99 per month.
- There are more than 200 million Prime members globally.
- Amazon’s Peachtree Corners facility delivers an average of 30,000 packages daily, but expects to handle more than 40,000 during Prime Day.
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