Amazon Retail Chief Shifts Culture Toward Lower Costs And—Gasp!—Some Slower ShippingAmazon Retail Chief Shifts Culture Toward Lower Costs And—Gasp!—Some Slower ShippingArt by Clark Miller; Herrington image via Getty.
The Big Read

Amazon Retail Chief Shifts Culture Toward Lower Costs And—Gasp!—Some Slower Shipping

Doug Herrington is determined to run the business quite differently than Jeff Bezos and his other predecessors did.

By
Theo Wayt

In the summer of 2022, Amazon was reeling. The company’s revenue growth had fallen to its lowest levels in decades, and it was grappling with a hangover from a costly, pandemic-era expansion of its warehouses and workforce.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy began breathing down the necks of lieutenants like Doug Herrington to focus on profits, a change from the company’s longtime growth-at-all-costs mentality. Herrington, a mild-mannered, bespectacled executive Jassy had recently tapped to lead the company’s vast retail business, soon homed in on a plan to put Jassy’s culture shift into action.

In the U.S., Amazon had long treated the country as one massive region, prioritizing fast delivery of almost any item to any customer no matter how far away the two were away from each other. The mentality had led to major growth, but it could also sometimes result in almost comical inefficiencies, like rushing trampolines across the U.S. on cross country flights.