Amazon Sorts Itself Out for the Holidays

New facilities are supposed to prevent delivery disappointments

Amazon.com employees load boxes with orders at the company’s fulfillment center in Tracy, Calif., on Nov. 30.Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

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By Spencer Soper

December 24, 2014 at 2:25 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

This article is part of the December 29, 2014 issue of businessweek.

Amazon.com did not want to see the ghost of Christmas past. Delays during the 2013 holiday shopping season forced the company to refund shipping charges and to issue gift cards to disappointed customers. To avoid a repeat, Amazon added seven more sorting centers—for a total of 15—to assert more control over delivery.

Sorting centers such as the 500,000-square-foot facility that opened in Kenosha, Wis., in October handle orders that have already been packed in boxes and labeled at the online retailer’s 50 U.S. fulfillment centers. The boxes are sent to the site to be organized by ZIP code and stacked six feet high on pallets, before getting trucked to nearby post offices for the final leg of deliveries.