--- title: Shirt Happens description: I recently bought a new shirt from Amazon. It's a nice shirt. But then it got me thinking. This shirt from Amazon's private-label will probably have a pretty big impact on the promotional product industry... image: https://info.brucefox.com/hubfs/Shirt%20Happens.jpg --- [![Custom Awards & Branded Displayable Products](https://info.brucefox.com/hubfs/Brucefoxapril2016_Theme/Images/logo-1.png)](http://brucefox.com/) Custom Awards & Branded Displayable Products [Interested in a career at Bruce Fox?](http://brucefox.com/careers) - [Home](http://brucefox.com/) - About - [Who We Are](http://brucefox.com/who-we-are/) - [The Bruce Fox Story](http://brucefox.com/about-2/bruce-fox-story/) - [Did You Know?](http://brucefox.com/about-2/faq/) - [What We Do](http://brucefox.com/why-bruce-fox/what/) - [What We Make](http://brucefox.com/our-capabilities/product-applications/) - [Support Services](http://brucefox.com/our-capabilities/support-services/) - Products - Bruce Fox Custom - [Bruce Fox Portfolio (Interactive)](http://fliphtml5.com/jmiqz/wwnl) - [Bruce Fox Portfolio (PDF)](https://brucefox.com/custom-awards-portfolio/) - DYR Stock Solutions - [2019 DYR Collection](https://dyr.brucefox.com/) - [ESP Product Search](http://mydyr.com/) - [2019 DYR Catalog (PDF)](https://brucefox.com/dyr-catalog-pdf/) - [DYR Catalog (Interactive)](http://online.fliphtml5.com/jmiqz/qmxk/) - [The Drinkwell](https://brucefox.com/new-drinkwell/) - [The Box](https://brucefox.com/box/) - [Signage & Lobby Art](https://brucefox.com/signage-lobby-art/) - Distributor Tools - [Why Bruce Fox? 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Never mind the goofy pseudo-modeling pose. The shirt is your basic garden-variety light blue polo shirt. A dad uniform staple. It might be like the forty-seven-eleventh one I’ve owned that looks pretty much like this one. But this particular shirt is quite special to me for a reason no shirt has ever been. I wanted to give it a try for what I think is an interesting reason. You might find it interesting too… ![amazon essentials-1](https://info.brucefox.com/hs-fs/hubfs/amazon%20essentials-1.jpg?width=374&name=amazon%20essentials-1.jpg) ## Amazon’s New Label It’s Amazon’s private-label brand “Amazon Essentials.” It’s a decent enough shirt. Seems to be well-made. Fits fine, washes like it should, comfortable. It has a neck hole, a torso hole and two arm holes. It won’t dazzle on a fashion show runway, but it won’t ruffle any feathers or offend anyone either. It’s an easy target for a lazy “gotta choose my shirt” morning before I head to the office. And it was 15 bucks. Delivered via Prime. Well within 24 hours after the order was placed. Which took 30 seconds, but only because I was momentarily distracted. The quality, price, service, delivery performance, order interface, etc. was all very Amazonian. (Amazonesque?...Amazonish? Whatever.) The alternative of going to an actual store—even if I knew exactly where to go—was a losing proposition by the time I even grabbed my keys to drive myself there. ## How Long Will It Take? The interesting part to me, though, wasn’t the 100% satisfaction I experienced. We’ve all come to expect that! It’s the question that pops into my head: How long will it take for them to do this… ![shirt with logo on it](https://info.brucefox.com/hs-fs/hubfs/shirt%20with%20logo%20on%20it.jpg?width=180&name=shirt%20with%20logo%20on%20it.jpg) While it’s true Amazon is doing this already to some extent, I’m talking about totally in-house imprinting on private label blank goods, fulfilled Prime style. As a promotional products distributor, can you honestly compete with that? Granted, it will cost them a shirtload of cash to capitalize their operation to include the imprinting of apparel. I know I’m leaving out lots of operating costs and fixed and variable overhead as I’m doing this, but let’s have some fun with some numbers! ## Fun with Numbers: Amazon & the Promo Industry - Let’s suppose it would take $1 million to invest in the state-of-the-art equipment to imprint stuff. Ah, hell, let’s make it $2 million. - And let’s outfit every one of Amazon’s U.S. and Canadian [fulfillment centers](https://www.aboutamazon.com/working-at-amazon/amazons-fulfillment-network) with that equipment. That’s two million bucks times, uh, let’s see…128 U.S. plus 7 Canada...that’s 135. Let’s add the [43 future U.S. facilities](https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/07/28/amazon-warehouse-expansion-fulfillment-centers.html) and the 3 planned for Canada…hmmmm…181…gives us $362 million. - 362 million one dollar bills placed end-to-end would span 35,000 miles, or 1.4 times around the earth’s equator. That’s a big number and a deal-breaker, right? Hold on. - [Amazon’s current annual revenue](https://www.statista.com/topics/846/amazon/) is $178 billion. The distance covered by dollar bills in this case is over 17,000,000 miles, which is nearly 700 times around the world. - That $362 million investment represents a shade over two-tenths of one percent of [Amazon’s annual revenue](https://www.aboutamazon.com/working-at-amazon/amazons-fulfillment-network). - Let’s eliminate the pesky zeroes after the decimal and make it a tangible fraction: Two-tenths of a percent is $20 for every $10,000. Apply that factor to your income and just let that soak in while we do some more math. - To remember the first seven digits of pi, count the number of letters in each word of this sentence: "How I wish I could calculate pi." This yields 3.141592. Voila! It doesn’t have anything to do with what we’re talking about here, but it’s a pretty cool parlor trick. I’m not sure what the trick is for remembering the sentence in the first place though. But I digress. - So Amazon clearly has the war chest to do this. But what about space? Let’s set aside 10,000 square feet for each imprinting operation. The [101 billion square feet](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/02/amazon-doubled-the-amount-of-space-it-owns-in-2017.html) presently occupied by their 135 currently-active U.S. and Canadian facilities means the average fulfillment center is over 770,000 square feet—more than 13 football fields. So the 10,000-foot allotment makes up just 1.3% of the space of an average facility. - The 101 billion square feet is equivalent to the floor space of 1,500 Pentagons. - 101 billion square feet is a 30” wide sidewalk spanning the Pacific Ocean between Amazon’s Seattle headquarters and Ho Chi Minh City, the largest city in Vietnam. Where my shirt was made. - An adult walking non-stop at an average pace of 3.1 miles per hour would walk that sidewalk in 100 days. No sleep, no food, no rest, and no…um…adding volume to the Pacific Ocean. - Our industry’s [annual revenue is $23 billion](https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-trends/market-research-reports/professional-scientific-technical-services/professional-scientific-technical-services/promotional-products.html). That’s a lot. Amazon spent $25 billion last year. On shipping. That’s slightly more than a lot. - The $682 million we’ve arbitrarily earmarked to set up Amazon’s imprint shop is about what they spend on shipping in 10 days, on average. - Apparel represents a significant piece of the industry’s pie. [Stats vary](https://www.sageworld.com/blog/index.php/2017/03/09/let-the-facts-do-the-talking-25-stats-about-promotional-products/), [depending on who’s counting](http://www.promotionalproductswork.org/media/1199/law_2017propro-factsheet.pdf) and what’s being counted—low- to mid-30’s as a percentage feels about right. Taking the middle number of 32.5%, that’s nearly $8 billion worth of pie. - The arrow in Amazon’s logo stretches from A to Z. The word apparel begins with the letter A. There will be other players emerging also. [Walmart’s revenue is 2.8 times](https://www.statista.com/statistics/555334/total-revenue-of-walmart-worldwide/) that of Amazon’s, for instance. Just sayin’. It’s really not a matter of *if*, it’s a matter of *when*—and how quickly it will go down. Where will you be when that happens? Somewhere safe, I hope, or you’re gonna get your shirt handed to you. --- ![Dave Miller, VP of Sales & Marketing](https://info.brucefox.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog_Images/DaveBlogImage2.jpg?width=127&name=DaveBlogImage2.jpg)   *Dave Miller is VP of Sales & Marketing at Bruce Fox, Inc. and has been a blogonaut for a couple of years. 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