ABSTRACT
Facilities built before 2000 still account for 89% of storage space in the United States, and that’s forcing tradeoffs. The average age of warehouses is 34 years, rendering them ‘increasingly obsolete’ for companies seeking new tech-friendly warehouses. Choosing a warehouse in 2019 and beyond has become a series of tradeoffs and strategic business decisions. If an e-commerce company’s warehouse is farther from the target market, it may end up being more technologically advanced to accelerate operations and deliver quickly to farther away customers. A distant warehouse might use more automation in its processes to keep operations moving quickly and deliver to customers as quickly as a closer warehouse would. Even though warehouse rentals are at a high and vacancies are at the lowest in quite a while, there’s also some imbalance with warehouse demand: e-commerce users really want the new, modern warehouses, so those get snapped up first.
