Every Company Needs an Amazon Strategy

Amazon recently occupied this 746K spec building, developed by Hillwood, in Joliet, IL.

CHICAGO—Amidst all the churning in the US industrial market, much of it due to e-commerce, one corporate name stands out: Amazon. Its impact has already been almost unprecedented, but in many ways, it has just begun its transformation of the US and world economy. In fact, some in industrial real estate say everyone, in 2018 and beyond, will need an “Amazon strategy.”

“Amazon is in the business of disrupting scalable industries,” Geoffrey Kasselman, executive managing director, national industrial practice, Newmark Knight Frank, tells GlobeSt.com. It may have begun building out its e-commerce capacity with books, for example, but it then added a vast array of other consumer products. The company eventually branched out to web services, and these days it’s looking at sectors, such as healthcare and residential, that seem far removed from its original business plans.