That Was Easy: Amazon Dash Button In An On-Demand World

The On-Demand Stack gets even more interesting every week. The latest installment, courtesy of Amazon, involves little WiFi-connected dongles with buttons for Amazon customers to summon — with the ease of a finger push — more of the item which corresponds with each dongle. Running low on toilet paper? Just tap the Charmin button provided by Amazon (while your phone is nearby) and Amazon will take care of the rest.

Amazon and Google are competitive along the fault lines of search and intent. Both live on input/output. This creative innovation around input from Amazon makes it theoretically easier to order more toilet paper vs pulling out your phone, finding the Amazon app, then inputting the search term, putting the item in your cart, and you may continue shopping, maybe — and then you have to check out. That said, setting up these dongles won’t be a piece of cake for the average user, either. I’m of the belief that even setting up basic bluetooth devices to the phone will be hard for people, but I believe Amazon will make it easier. And, they can distribute anything.

So, if this works, this is a huge leap forward for input — what about output, i.e. how soon you need the toilet paper? That’s where things have been harder for Amazon.

Back in 2013, I wrote a post titled, “From Amazon Prime To Amazon Pronto, The Future Of Physical Delivery.” Amazon figured out how to get us anything in that 48 hour window. Now, for the past few years, with the combination of mobile devices and a shift in the labor economy, new companies have emerged with new models to add gusto to the “pronto.” Some services are set up to deliver you things on demand, such as Uber and Postmates and Sprig — some things are set up to deliver things in a more scheduled manner, like Instacart, DoorDash, Boxed, and Luxe. Amazon has been trying to chip away at better delivery on the same day — they’ve dabbled in groceries for years, they just announced home assembly services for big orders, and they clearly want to deliver more things faster to our homes and offices.

The output function here is trickier for Amazon to execute on within this 48 hour window. Additionally, my observation of how confusing Prime Pantry is for the average user (as many of those household items are costly to ship, so they devised a confusing tax around them) could make Dash a hit because people may not order things at the point of depletion, but rather when the supply is about to be depleted.

Ultimately, the craftiness with this move around Dash Button is something I’d frankly expect from a startup — in this case, it’s Amazon, the somewhat lumbering incumbent, fresh off the heals of that Fire Phone debacle and stock massacre. It is a terrific concept, assuming consumers can wire them up and they work. Let’s see how consumers behave as these rollout. App installs for these nonviral apps is hard and costly, and Amazon can just shove these into corresponding boxes or send them to us based on our order histories.

The other angle is that Dash Button is likely built to be a broader platform, extending from the regular household inventory systems into specific verticals — think basic stores, or small businesses, or to order dinner, or groceries. It all comes down to SKUs. Every button — like every app — can empower the customer to access a SKU from a variety of sources, and Amazon (or a startup eventually) can help get it to the destination fast. End of the day, I’m impressed. Assuming Dash Button is spread to customers properly and they can onboard, it could be 1,000x easier to order versus a mobile app, no question. So if you’re scoring at home: Output is still a knife fight between Amazon, Google, Uber, and a bunch of startups; but on Input, Amazon’s ingenuity scores very, very high, reminding me of the classic Staples ad campaign with the “Easy” button (pictured above).